


Signal in the Dark

by RedHammer



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Contemporaneous with TLJ, Drama, Enemies to ?? to ??????, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Heavy on Reylo, Inappropriate Use of the Force, Jedi Training, Romance, Slow Burn, They are both turbovirgins, light on plot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2019-03-16 18:05:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 30,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13641624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedHammer/pseuds/RedHammer
Summary: She didn't ask for this. Who would? But if the Force was going to keep dumping her into the mind of a remorseless killer, she wasgoingto learn something useful in exchange.Maybe that's what it was going to take to convince Master Luke she belonged on Ahch-To. To convince herself.A post TFA, partly TLJ compliant Force-Bond slow-burn story about two lonely kids in space and how they learn to talk to each other.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so let me explain real quick. This takes place after the Force Awakens, but contains a few elements from the Last Jedi. The bulk of this was written after that amazing trailer came out (you know the one) but before the movie was released. It is not a post-TLJ story. More of a re-imagining of their Force Bond, and where it could lead. Hopefully it's not too confusing, but please let me know if I can explain it better. Enjoy the unabashed Reylo!

Meditation had come easy to Rey.

She knew it had surprised and kept on surprising Master Luke, the first few times they had sat down on a salty, wind-whipped bluff and he had told her to breathe. Just breathe.

She had slipped inside herself quietly and neatly, treading a well-worn path into her own imagination, and she sensed rather than saw the raised eyebrows of her new instructor. Meditation, she quickly realised, was just the same thing she’d done almost every day on Jakku, with a little stricter herding of her thoughts. There were many, many scratches on the inner wall of an AT-AT lying in the desert that testified how long she’d had to practice. Lying awake at night with nothing but the sharp snarls and groans of metal contracting in the freezing cold for company, using her imagination to escape had been a survival technique she had practiced as diligently and unconsciously as her careful conservation of water.

But now, when she looked inwards, there was something waiting for her.

The Force lived and breathed like a _being_. It had been a sleeping rock before, something she’d known existed on the lower floors of her consciousness but whose presence she had no more reason to question than why her legs walked or her heart valves contracted. Before she’d touched the lightsaber in Maz’s cantina, she assumed that everyone had this inert lump of unknowable something inside them too.

She learned how wrong she’d been about that. That, and so many other things.

The lump had sprouted now. It pushed into her arms and legs and chest, trilled in her ear like a newborn eager to tumble out of the nest and flap. There was a clarity to her senses, as though a freshly ground lens had been slotted into place. Earth and sky, air and water, flesh and blood. It all came together in a startlingly vibrant, complex collision. When she walked the shoreline of Ahch-To and watched the clear water ripple and ebb over her bare feet, she realised she’d been walking her whole life down a narrow corridor hung with pictures, every single one turned to face the wall.

Now, one by one, under her Master’s gruff, patient, reluctant tutelage, she began to turn them over.

Her quick progress scared Luke. She could sense that now too. She wasn’t sure anyone had ever _liked_ her, before she’d stumbled across Finn and BB-8, but she was quite certain no one had been scared of her.

It was impossible to stop, though. She drank in the holocronic history of the Jedi like a bone-dry sponge dropped in a puddle. If Luke asked her to try and lift a pebble in the morning, by evening she was building a cairn out of rocks bigger than her fist. The lightsaber forms were tougher; she had to unlearn a little of what had evolved after years of using a staff to defend herself - but she began rising well before the day had begun to spend an extra hour before breakfast to thrash her body into remembering their shape.

Luke watched her pre-dawn practices occasionally. When she had first felt the pressure of his gaze from a rock-shelf overhead, she halted clumsily and powered down the saber, trying to read his expression in the dull grey light. He had said nothing, only frowned deeply and left. Guilt and doubt had instantly corroded her stomach and she abandoned her practice for the day, though she came back the next morning. He had too.

And then, during a meditation about two months into her training, she’d seen it. Nothing extraordinary had preceded the event; no dramatic upheaval in the routine she and Luke had hammered out organically between themselves.

But suddenly she could see _him._ Walking - staggering, more accurately - down the brushed metal corridor of a space station. She was both within and without in the moment; she saw through his eyes but retained her own sense of separateness.

She knew she was not Kylo Ren. But she knew she was seeing what he was seeing in that precise instant of time.

It was all over in about three heartbeats - he took a step and fell awkwardly against the wall of the corridor, shoulder taking his weight, and he looked down to his foot. Then, like an overstretched rubber cord snapping back into place, she was herself again.

Luke had opened his eyes at her violent, heaving gasp. She’d scrambled to her feet, winded as though she’d just sprinted up the stone steps, and he’d taken in her urgent, no doubt wild expression. She’d opened her mouth to explain the bizarre moment, but the words had dammed up in her throat at the cloud drawing over his face.

She wanted desperately to prove herself to Master Luke. She wanted to do well. She didn’t want to give him any more reasons to look at her as one might a ticking bomb, because one day he might tell Chewie to bundle her back into the Falcon, get her out of his sight because she was an unteachable menace, and she thought she really just might curl up and die if that happened. Not disappointing the first true teacher she’d ever had, this wise and prickly man, had become her singular goal.

So she closed her mouth, sat back down in a meditation pose, and strained to forget all about the dull throbbing in her ankle.

***

The second time had lasted longer. One moment, she’d been sitting cross-legged in the sun by the cold, crystalline stream they used for water and washing, scrubbing contentedly at a tricky oil stain she’d found on her spare arm wrap. It was a beautiful day, sun winnowed through the leaves with a breeze taking the edge off the warmth. Luke had also been the first to properly explain how seasons worked on a planet with a climate that varied beyond year-round devastation. She knew now Ahch-To was in ‘spring’, and soon it would be ‘summer’. A little smile flicked up her mouth as she scrubbed, indulging in a daydream about what some of the snidey, thuggish underlings of Plutt would give to be sitting next to all this wonderful, drinkable water. By Jakku standards, and her own, she lived now in unparalleled luxury.

She hummed tunelessly to herself as she dipped her wrap into the brook and wrung it out with a twist, listening to the heady sound of large, splashy drops hitting the water’s surface.

And then, as though someone had dropped a black sack over her head, there was darkness.

Hair obscured her vision, hair that didn’t belong to her. She was in a room - or cell, perhaps - and she was lying on the floor. No, she quickly corrected herself, _he_ was. A pair of jackboots appeared in her - his - line of sight. A sound above - the clinking of a large chain, of the calibre that tethered machinery to the floor of cargoholds. The legs belonging to the jackboots bent, there was a whistling sound, and then - _agony._ It sprouted in a line along his ribs like a crack appearing in the earth. She cried out in shock. The chain whistled. Again, and then again he was whipped, and she felt the instant a rib gave way under the horrifying assault.

Without meaning to, without any idea what was really going on, her mind dove into his. Pain, pain, pain was everywhere, it was filling every pore of his existence and rendering him insensate. There was no past, no present, no future, there was only pain. One small, hard nut of a thought bounced around intact in the maelstrom.

_This is what I want. This is what I need. This is what I deserve._

He was chanting it to himself like a oath. It codified his pain into something more cerebral than just the sensation on which he was sloppily gorging, as if it was elevated to some kind of higher purpose through the words. She felt a thick, physical wave of revulsion. It was all just too disgusting.

The mantra stopped. _Get out,_ she heard. A hand appeared, clad in black leather, and it clenched into a fist. He used it to begin battering the side of his head as the chain continued to turn his body to pulp. _Get out, get out, get out, GET OUT._

 _Gladly,_ she replied, and yanked herself up and out of the pit of his mind with all her strength, blindly hoping it would be enough to cut the connection. To her instant and all-consuming relief, she was back in the sunlight, her arm wrap flapping gently on a rock a little ways downstream.

A hand flew automatically to her side, testing that the flesh was whole and her ribs intact. They were, of course, though streaks of pain still lingered in thick welts. Those began dissipating quickly, and she realised that however vivid the sensations in the moment, they were not permanent. They were merely… visits. She was _visiting_ Kylo Ren.

She drew her knees up to her chin and shuddered.

***

Despite the vile impression the whole episode had left, it distracted her all day long. Her curiosity for all things the Force was never sated. Was this another one of her dormant powers coming to life? Was it unique or common? Who else’s mind could she potentially ‘visit’?

Could she do it deliberately?

As she settled down for the night on the thin pallet in the hovel Luke had designated as hers, this last question burned her brain and made sleep impossible. After she had tossed for a few hours and fruitlessly attempted to think of literally anything else, she sat up and shucked off her blankets.

She would just give it one go. That was all. One quick look in on the demented lunatic to test the theory, and then she’d finally get some sleep. If there was a chance she could confirm a few things about this phenomenon before she spoke about it with her Master, all the better. It seemed like a reasonable compromise, and she nodded firmly into the silent, twilit room.

Pushing her back to the wall, still sitting on her pallet with her blanket over her lap, she let her hands rest lightly on her knees. She had no idea how to go about this, but the last two times had happened when her mind was centred and relaxed so she supposed it was as good as any place to start.

She closed her eyes. One by one, she found her thoughts and loosened them from their moorings. They began to drift away until she was light, empty, her mind’s most basic moving parts meshed in effortless sync. And then, she reached out into the nothingness.

For a few minutes, nothing was all there was. Just the soft sounds of the night tickling the outer periphery of her senses. But after casting her mental net as far afield as she could manage, she felt a tiny pull, as though a magnet had swept overhead. The Force thrummed encouragingly when she turned towards the tugging. Once she’d found her destination it was almost instant, like she was travelling on greased rails. She had slipped into his head before she really registered that she’d succeeded.

Swallowing, she firmed up her resolve. This time, she would have some agency instead of getting buffeted in his abhorrent madness like a leaf in a sandstorm.

He seemed calmer than he’d been during her last visit. He also detected her instantly, the machinery of his psyche freezing in place. She felt distant shields slamming shut, his brain going into lockdown as efficiently as if he’d prepared for it. Doors continued to latch tightly until she was fenced off from all but the very top layer of his mind.

He was somewhere dark, as she was. A strip of artificial light filtered in under a door, and a blue glow came from somewhere to the right. The low, purring hum that was the signature noise of life on a spaceship was overlaid with muted, intermittent bubbling, and she couldn’t figure out what was making it.

His vision swerved abruptly towards the noise, and she connected sound to sight. Bacta tanks. He was in a med unit.

His ridiculous mask sat on a chair within hand’s reach, as did his saber. Expanding her awareness, she realised the pricking, odd sensation in the crook of his right arm was the entry point of several lines of unidentifiable bags of fluid hanging above his bed.

The pain of the side that had been whipped was still there, but the sharp edges had been rounded off. Not gone entirely, which she found strange. Wasn’t he some precious First Order minion? If they had denied him access to decent painkillers, perhaps he was out of favour.

_Why would I let them drug me? The pain is good. The pain creates power._

_Shut up,_ she replied at once, determined to press on quickly. The last thing she wanted to do was converse with this monster.

 _See for yourself._ His hand reached out, lines dangling. It was illuminated for a brief moment with a blue halo by the light of the bacta tank. Then, it crushed into a fist, and the tank imploded. She watched as the tube collapsed into a million parts and the room was flooded with a miniature tide of bacta water and glass shards.

She recoiled with a jump at the sound, and at the abrupt destruction.

 _See?_ He was awash with a hot, inebriated feeling. _This is power._ He twitched his arm and the next tank in the line disintegrated. Black monitoring droids were tumbling over in jarring crashes, and ruined swathes of reflective gauze washed across the floor, tangling around the foot of beds like so much detritus.

She clenched her teeth. The equipment sloshing and fizzing in the water would have supplied a Resistance outpost for a year. 

_You’re pathetic_ , she declared, feeling a sudden spike of temper.

In response, he sat up and roughly yanked the cords out of his arm. He lifted both hands into the air and, as if obeying a master’s whistle, every cot in the room except his own also rose. They crossed at the wrists, and the ward became a madhouse cacophony of beds sailing into walls, glass shattering and machinery short-circuiting as it fell into the swamp on the floor.

 _No, I was wrong_ , she said bitingly, trying to push as much derision through the link as she possibly could. _You’re pathetic,_ and _insane_.

_Get out. Get out. Get out._

She needed no further prompting, and cut the mental cord with a resounding snap. Teeth still grinding, she threw herself down, pulled the blanket tightly over a shoulder and glared at the wall until she fell asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos and comments make me happy for days.


	2. Chapter 2

“Master.”

Luke didn’t turn away from the leak in the water calcinator he was attempting to patch, giving her an absent-minded glance.

“Mm? What?”

“Can you -” The winged nut she was holding skated through her fingers over and over like a worrystone. “Are you able to speak to people who aren’t… present?”

His attention sharpened, a pinch forming around his eyes.

“Why?” he asked slowly. “Can you?”

“No!” She handed him the nut with a quick shake of her head and a bright expression. “No, not at all. Just something I read last night in the history of the Shyrii sect. Something about being able to -” She waved a hand in a circle, grasping for a way to explain without giving herself away. “Being able to contact other Jedi using their minds, across great distances. It sounds like a useful trick.”

Luke turned back to the condenser unit, fitting the nut to the spanner he was holding and screwing it into place with hard twists.

“It’s not a trick. And it’s not something that can be taught.” When she didn’t reply, he lowered his tool and glared into the exposed machinery, a muscle twitching in his jaw. “Put it out of your mind.”

Rey cast her eyes down, feeling a pang of disappointment. “Right,” she answered quietly.

“There’s better things to turn your energy towards, Rey.” Luke gave her shoulder a brief conciliatory clasp. “Keep reading. Keep practicing. Your frustrations will dissipate, I promise you.”

She smiled weakly. “Right.”

***

The next night, she paced her room and chewed on a thumbnail, throwing glances at the pallet occasionally. ‘Visiting’ that creature’s mind was horrible, yes. But she still had so many unanswered questions about it all. And the first shoots of possibility had begun to take hold in her head. What if she saw or heard something while she was in there that was useful to the Resistance? What if she worked hard at it and actually gained control of Ren’s body, or unearthed some buried secret that would prove his downfall? She could have the best chance of disabling the greatest threat to their efforts that anyone had ever had. Maybe she could even force him out an airlock.

The last idea she dismissed as quickly as it occurred. Ren was an evil blight on the galaxy and everyone in it, but still… no. That was a little too much like a First Order tactic for her comfort.

But if she could go to Luke and tell him something tangible, something useful she’d learned, surely he’d be happy about it. A familiar ache tugged on her gut as a little fantasy played out in her head, something vague with General Organa telling her she’d saved lives and Luke with a fatherly hand on her shoulder.

Mind made up, she settled cross legged on her pallet, drawing the blanket over her knees once more. Luke’s warning gave her only a vaguely uneasy taste in her mouth.

First things first, she knew she had to strengthen her own mental defenses. Ren’s shields had been vault-door, triple layered security duracrete. If by some chance he found a way to reverse the link, she knew her shields were not nearly as tough. She had power, yes, but when he’d interrogated her on the Finaliser, sensing his emotions had been more luck than skill. She’d just been desperate to fling him out and had somehow overshot and landed in his head. He’d been surprised, and she would never have that benefit again.

Once she was gazing on the empty field of her thoughts, she set about attempting to reinforce the access to the lower levels of her mind. She conjured images of the sealed rooms she’d found occasionally in wrecks, the armories she couldn’t break into even with the help of a back-mounted welder or a rope attached to her speeder. Behind that wall, she placed all knowledge of Ahch-To and D’Qar, anything that even remotely pinged as Resistance related. Finn’s unconscious body sealed in its hermetic casket went in there too, and her fist curled on her lap. She’d protect his location with her last neuron if she had to.

Once she felt happy with the result, she took a mental step back and cautiously tried to maintain that state. She had no idea if it was strong enough to prevent Ren if he was really looking, or how long she could keep the wall intact. If worse came to worst, she was confident in her ability to close off the connection in a hurry.

Taking a girding breath, she centred herself and reached tentatively into the void. A part of her hoped that she’d land in some other, saner head. But no, as quickly as if she’d been berthed in a docking station, she was back in the familiar, disturbing, jagged-glass landscape that was Kylo Ren.

As she expected, the first sensation was standing in a corridor of activated blast doors. Her mental ‘movement’, so to speak, was contained entirely into a little section of his upper consciousness.

Though he didn’t cut access entirely, she noted, which was odd considering his violent reactions to her intrusions. If the situation had been reversed, she would have been begging Master Luke to teach her how to sever the connection by now.

 _I want to ask you some questions_ , she heard.

Ignoring him, she tapped into his outward perceptions. He seemed to be sitting in a cockpit of a small twin-stick fighter that was similar in size to the haulage junkers she’d flown for Plutt, surrounded by dials and flickering readouts that indicated a startup sequence. Fear seized her immediately. Was he about to lead a sortie against her friends? The fleet could be in danger, she had to tell someone, she had to -

 _It’s a practice craft_ , he cut off her ramble witheringly. To prove his point, he leaned forward and jammed his elbows into the corners of the dash, butting his visor with a thud against the front shield. When he craned his neck she realised the ship had no wings, or mounted guns, or indeed anything else to it. It was just a bubble suspended in the air, connected to the ground by a ladder and sitting in a nondescript hangar.

She relaxed. Fractionally. He returned to his seat and continued flicking switches.

 _How are you doing this?_ he asked.

She tentatively took his measure. For the moment, he seemed relatively stable, though she was sure that was never a permanent state in Kylo Ren. If it meant she might be able to ask a few pertinent questions of her own, she could answer a few of his.

 _I don’t know_ , she answered honestly. _I just reach out and this is where I end up._

_You assume you’ll be able to spy through me? Use your little trick to help your cause?_

There was not much point in lying about it. _Of course_ , she answered. _It’s not as if I’m here because it’s a pleasant place to be_ , she added with a dose of scorn.

To her faint surprise he let the comment pass. She even felt a vague sense of agreement.

 _You’ll never learn anything useful. I will ensure that you won’t,_ he declared _._

Gently, trying to avoid instant detection, she pushed against the closest mental barrier, testing its rigidity. It was as though she had run a feather over a destroyer’s front keel for all the effect it had.

 _Pointless_ , he thought with icy detachment, almost disinterest. _My shields are perfect. The Supreme Leader has taught me strength, and I have become strong._

She rolled her eyes. _Snoke taught you how to become a murderous puppet and very little else,_ she replied, laden with contempt.

She felt his mental hackles rise at that, and saw his fists curl tightly around the twin joysticks. _I am no one’s_ puppet, he enunciated angrily, indifference vanished.

 _You’re absurd, and completely deluded,_ she shot back. _There’s no point talking rationally to a murderer who thinks killing his own father is a good idea._

A waft of a thought reached her just before he destroyed it.

 _Or… it wasn’t your idea._ She quickly put two and two together. _Did Snoke tell you to kill Han? And you obeyed?_

There was blank silence. Then only - _The Supreme Leader is far-seeing. He knows my path to the true Dark better than I do_.

She couldn’t help but laugh hollowly. _You are a sad, sad creature, Kylo Ren. I can’t believe I was ever afraid of you._

 _You should always be afraid of me if you value your trivial life,_ he snarled.

The threat rang hollow. Now she’d been in his head, even limited as it was, there was far less mystery and without mystery, she discovered all her fear of him dissolving like so much sugar in water.

 _No_ , she insisted, feeling the truth of it as she said it. _I’m not afraid of you in the least._

_You looked afraid when I sliced that traitor’s spine in half._

_Yes, I was. But I’m not now. Now, I just pity you._

As she predicted, the final blast doors screamed down hard, trying to boot her out of his head. Her vision greyed, but she gritted her teeth and marshalled her energy, throwing all of her concentration into maintaining the link. She was shut out entirely from the stream of his thoughts, but she could use his eyes in close enough snippets to know he was flinging himself out of the dummy craft and down the ladder. Despite the huge swathe of her reserves it was taking, she found it fascinating that he couldn’t dislodge her completely if she actively tried to stay.

This ‘bond’, as loathsome and skin-crawling as it was to connect herself in the same thought to him, seemed to be multilateral. Intrigued as to the mechanics of it despite the instincts telling her to leave this volatile monster to his bizarre brand of evil, she clung on stubbornly in the tiny space she could defend. He couldn’t kick her out entirely if she didn’t want to go, and she was pretty sure vice versa would apply. Perhaps she was just more powerful now than she had been when he’d first captured her, simple as that. And _that_ was a pleasing thought.

As if they’d been cued, all the techs and sundry staff had vanished from the hangar bay exit towards which he was now menacing. When she tried to worm back into the first layer of his mind, she heard him release a growl that rose in pitch just below a scream. His lightsaber ignited and began dragging a melted line in the corridor wall. A small gaggle of what looked to be maintenance droids scattered and fled as he rounded the corner like a happabore who’d been stung on the nose, the floor vibrating with his furious tread.

 _Is there really a need for the dramatics?_ she asked diffidently. _You’re completely overreacting._

He stopped in front of a recessed door and punched a long string of keys into a nearby pad. She tried vainly to remember the order but the motion was too fluid and well-practiced. The door slid open to reveal an enormous (if lifelessly sparse) room. His quarters, she guessed.

Once inside, he fumbled with his mask, tearing it off in order to whip it across the room with all his strength. It left a sizable dent in the wall, falling to the ground with a heavy crack.

 _WHAT DO YOU WANT!_ he boomed into his own head.

 _Do you really pitch a tantrum over every little flea bite!_ she shouted right back. _Stop being so bloody childish. I just want to talk!_

He threw himself bodily into a low chair, his elbows leaning on his knees and his hands squeezing into fists at his temples.

_Why. Do you want. To talk. To me._

_Aren’t you wondering what this thing is? Why I can do this to you? I want to figure it out._ Despite himself, she knew he had been curious earlier. _Didn’t you want to ask me questions?_ she prodded.

His knees widened as his hands ground more firmly into the sides of his head. Abruptly, he stood up and crossed the room, hand rising to wave aside a partition she hadn’t noticed. It rattled as it was thrown too quickly into its berth.

There was a small ‘fresher inside, as blankly utilitarian as everything else in his yawningly oversized chambers. He flicked a tap on the chrome vanity and bent over to douse his face with water. When he straightened and gripped the sink, looking into the sharply lit mirror, she finally saw the face of the man she’d last seen across a chasm in the snowy forest.

The scar was not as bad as she’d thought it would be. It was covered in a healing strip that disappeared under the collar of his overcoat, the small tail end on his forehead left untouched. It was his eyes that were far more disturbing. Purple, almost black bags hung underneath, creating two sunken half-moons. His lower lash line was rimmed with red as if he was perpetually coming off a crying jag. Thin, spindly veins of bloodshot marred the whites and made the dark brown irises duller. Wet hair clung to his forehead in scraggly black lines, contrasting alarmingly with the unhealthy pallor of his skin.

 _When did you last sleep?_ she asked before she’d really thought about it. Why should she care when he slept, or didn’t?

“I don’t know,” he said out loud, staring hard at himself. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

Rey was reminded suddenly of the little figures she’d made as a child in the sand outside her AT-AT of some strange, weird creature she’d seen on her holopad, like a fish, on the rare days when enough moisture hung in the air to leave frozen crystals littered on the sand before daybreak. Invariably when she returned later in the day, they had baked and cracked in the sun. One push from her boot was enough to disperse them back into formlessness.

He looked like he was crumbling from the inside out. The slightest breath, the gentlest nudge, and he would disintegrate.

 _Ren,_ she tried tentatively. _Do you want to talk, or not?_

“Go away,” he said into the mirror, voice soft and ragged. He leaned forward, eyes dragging slowly up and down his own reflection. “Just disappear.”

It struck her, uncomfortably, that it didn’t seem like he was talking to her. She yanked herself up and out, leaving him alone over his sink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos and comments make me happy for days.


	3. Chapter 3

She didn’t go back the next night, or the next. She found herself wondering if the whole thing hadn’t been a huge mistake. It might make her Master angrier at her, not pleased. She had begun to feel the first creeping threads of desperation curling around her throat every time she sensed his building unease. The speed of her progress and the depth of the furrows on Luke’s brow seemed to be intrinsically linked. Yesterday, he had told her that he had seen her strength only once before, that it hadn’t scared him enough at the time but he didn’t intend to repeat that mistake.

Of course, she’d known at once who he’d been talking about, and a fresh surge of anger rose in her towards his traitorous nephew. He had truly destroyed his family’s ability to trust anyone ever again. Inadvertently he’d also trampled and muddied her own path to becoming a Jedi, by shattering her Master’s confidence in his teaching. She’d tried, vainly, to reassure Luke that she had no intention of ever listening to the allure of the Dark, but her thinly veiled begging fell on deaf ears and he’d set out into the depths of the island without another word.

He hadn’t returned by nightfall or by the next morning. By the fourth day, as Rey was practicing her lightsaber form in the grey morning alone, she was formulating a plan to search. Luke had lived alone on this island for years, so she doubted he’d come to any serious harm, but… maybe he was talking himself out of teaching her. Maybe he’d finally make up his mind that she was too dangerous to be trained. The thought weighed her down like an anchor, drowning her in anxiety mixed with a little dash of self-loathing.

In the middle of a sequence of slashes that she knew she wasn’t giving even close to her all, there was an unexpected push on the edge of her mind. Like someone was outside, throwing their shoulder to the door to try and get in. She knew instantly what and who it was, and she powered down her saber, crouching in a panic. Frantically, she gathered up her scattering thoughts and stowed the most dangerous ones behind the vault door she’d constructed.

His presence breached her head just as she finished. A nauseous feeling dried up her throat as the memories of the first time he’d combed through her head came unbidden.

_But this time is different. This time, you should have been expecting me. Or did you think I wouldn’t figure it out?_

His rifling of her memories was trained, discarding white noise instantly in favour of the fully-formed impressions. He was so fast it felt like he was operating on muscle memory, and she could barely keep him angled away from the soft underbelly of her most private thoughts. It was being back on that base and strapped to that horrid table all over again, and to her extreme irritation, a single frustrated tear squeezed from the corner of her eye. Was she really just the same as she was back then? Had any of her hard work made a single bit of difference?

_No. You’re strong. I can sense it._

_Much good it’s done me, thanks to you_ , she couldn’t resist spitting back.

His skimming intensified in speed, and she felt like she was trying to fend off the expert slicing of a surgeon’s scalpel while already under anesthesia. He had clearly earned his position as Snoke’s most useful thug.

“Stop it,” she ground out between clenched teeth. “Just _stop!_ ”

To her surprise, and relief, he did.

_You still need guidance._

“Hah!” she barked sharply, voice high and a little tremulous. He really had a nerve, saying such a thing right after he’d laid siege to her mind like that. “I have a Master. I would never, ever, from now until the heat death of the universe, consider swapping him for _you_.”

_My uncle. Of course._ She felt a thick wave of biting condescension dump over her senses. _Explains why your layering technique is so crude. And that’s what you meant by, ‘thanks to me’._

_Yes_ , she said loudly, angrily inside her own head, flexing her mental boundaries until she had him hemmed in. Not as controlled as his defenses, but not nothing either. _Thanks to you. When your own nephew slaughters your entire Academy, trust becomes a touch difficult. You murderous snake!_

_You have no idea about that_ , he replied, and for once his go-to response seemed to be tight defensiveness instead of raw fury. _On that, you have no right to judge me._

_As if you didn’t forfeit the right to say that a long time ago. I can judge you, and I will!_ she exclaimed angrily.

He seemed to lose interest in the argument. _Do what you want._

She seriously contemplated letting out a screech that would skip across the ocean, and she had never considered herself a screecher. The mind-blowing gall of this _criminal!_

A few moments passed in silence, during which she furiously decimated an innocent clump of grass. It was depressing and maddening to realise that the first conversation she’d had in nearly a week was with a remorseless murderer. Even more so when she remembered the invisible tether that seemed to be forcing them into the others’ company for the foreseeable future.

_Try to come into my head_ , he said at last.

_What?_

_Just do it._

Her back molars were soon going to be in danger of being ground into dust, but she knew what he wanted to test. She had to reluctantly admit she’d wanted to test the idea too; could they coexist in each others heads at the same time?

She took a few cleansing lungfuls of the cool, salty air, and sat down on the flat stone. Pushing along their connection was tougher than usual - trying to centre herself with a presence attached to her like a leech was not the easiest thing she’d ever attempted - but before a minute had passed, she felt herself slipping into what was becoming a recognisable space in his thoughts.

He appeared to be sitting at a large, black (of course) ellipse of a table. Dotted around its border were various First Order lackeys whose uniforms varied by one or two shades of grey and one or two badges on their chests.

Excitement raced through her, obliterating her earlier bad humour and overriding even her interest in the answer that yes, they could exist concurrently in each other’s heads. Had he really been so stupid as to let her watch a briefing? This was her chance!

_You are a talentless spy. It’s almost painful how transparent you are._

She ignored him. If he was content to underestimate her, all the better. She focused intently instead on what a red-haired man at the front of the room was saying, who seemed to be leading the group. Rey strained her senses, wishing desperately she had something to write with handy - a holopad, a sharp rock, anything.

“There is no cause for rash action,” the man she supposed was a captain ( _General_ , Ren corrected) announced imperiously, swirling a baton around a raised holo-display that was nothing more than a series of bars. “I believe Phasma has the situation well in hand. Stormtrooper defections are still within the Supreme Leader’s tolerated levels, and the operation moves apace. We must endeavour - ”

His mouth continued to move, and she still heard sound bouncing off the room’s surfaces, but suddenly it was impossible to interpret the noise as speech. It was as if a knob had been rolled too far on a headset and tuned everything to static. Rey’s eyebrows knotted in consternation - was the bond losing strength?

Faint triumph skittered over Ren’s consciousness. Ah. It was him, somehow. Rey smacked an irritated fist in the grass as the ginger continued to babble a mush of unintelligible echos.

_You didn’t remember what I said? You will get nothing from me._

Rey wrestled with her renewed temper for a moment, reciting a few choice epithets under her breath and smothering the urge to sever the connection with as much finality as she could muster.

_Continue to try, though._

_What would be the point?_ she snipped.

Kylo reclined deeper in his chair and swivelled lightly back and forth.

_Maybe you’ll catch me out, one day. Or maybe you should ask me how I do it._

_That seems even more pointless!_ she exclaimed raggedly.

_You aren’t curious?_

Rey bit her lip, torn. She _was_ curious - achingly so. She was a magnet rolling around a case of ball bearings; no choice in what questions stuck to her.

But before she could answer, she realised the room had gone silent. The meeting had ground to a halt.

The ginger whipped the baton behind his back, peering down his nose across the table. Rey understood his next words perfectly - it seemed Kylo had readjusted the dial.

“Did you hear me, Ren? Anything your sagacious insight could add?”

A dozen heads swivelled. Every face was flat, hard, detached. Kylo was silent.

“No. I thought not. Oddities always do prefer the sullen silence of children.” A perverted grin crept over his face and it was one she recognised instantly; that of a bully enjoying their sport. Rey was strongly reminded of Plutt holding a thick stack of portions over her head and telling her to jump for them.

“No matter. Incompetency will out. I look forward to discovering how you’ll disappoint us tomorrow.” The general sniggered, and one or two of his braver compatriots joined in. Their eyes were bright with equal parts fear and revulsion, as if Ren were a leashed, mangy dog to be veered around in close quarters but spat on from a distance.

Kylo remained mute. The general, looking emboldened by this passivity, leaned over the desk, his pale, dead eyes wide with ugly happiness.

“You are…” The ginger raised his eyes to the ceiling, as though receiving divine inspiration for his next words. “ _Quite_ pathetic, aren’t you?”

The man was completely intolerable. Rey was a bit amazed Kylo hadn’t killed him before now.

_So am I._

_Not that I’m encouraging it_ , she added quickly.

_I can’t. He’s too useful to my master. But I’ve dreamt of it. Vividly and often._

_Well, he’s revolting, AND he’s boring. You should leave._

After a moment’s deliberation, Kylo got to his feet. The bully halted in the middle of a fresh drone on the happiness of the Supreme Leader and narrowed his eyes at Kylo.

“We aren’t done. Sit down, or I’ll take measures.”

_Measures? What, he’ll duel you to the death with that baton? Does he know what a lightsaber is?_

Kylo stalked around the table, heading for the door.

“Dammit, Ren, sit down! Or consider yourself reported!” Flecks of spittle flew from the man’s mouth, whose colouring was now rising rapidly to match his hair.

At the doorway, Kylo paused. The faintest tremor of fear vibrated his mind and Rey found she didn’t like the sensation one bit, even second-hand.

_You’re Kylo Ren!_ She mentally threw up her hands in disbelief. _You’re a complete and utter bastard whose crimes are too numerous and heinous to name. You cannot seriously be frightened by a little sandrag like_ that.

_I’m not_ , he replied coolly. _But I am afraid of Snoke._

Before she could process her surprise at the honest admission, Kylo had raised a hand. A thrill of alarm rang through her.

_Don’t kill him!_

_I told you. I can’t._

Instead, Rey watched as the table upended itself and every occupant was dumped violently from their chairs. Fragments of breaking holo projected onto the ginger’s face as the equipment was sent flying. As Kylo turned on his heel, she heard him scream.

“REN!”

The door whooshed gently shut on the scene of bureaucratic carnage. Rey felt a bubble of amusement rise up at the ludicrous spectacle as Kylo stalked off.

_That was… odd. I always thought the First Order had to be run by clones. I never thought you’d have disagreements like people._ A small frown wrinkled her brow. _Makes it worse, in some ways._

_There are competing agendas within the Order. I do not concern myself with the paths of the others._

_Competing agendas?_ Rey tilted her head, frown deepening. _So do you, or don’t you agree with the agenda of ‘others’ like that General?_

He was silent, and Rey sensed he was debating simply not answering.

_We differ,_ was all he said, and she knew that was all she was eking out of him on the subject.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's always good when they can share a nice, healthy activity like loathing Hux.
> 
> Another chapter tomorrow. Kudos and comments make all the effort so incredibly worth it. Thank you to everyone who has read and enjoyed this far.


	4. Chapter 4

Kylo began descending a flight of stairs with purpose, the whole staircase clanging with the thud of his boots. As he approached what looked to her to be a full-body security scanner, a lower order officer averted his eyes and made a side-step out of his path with such efficiency that Rey knew he’d done it many times before. She made a guess, and he confirmed that this was the armoury.

While she was sure there would be some obtuse reason why it didn’t matter that he gave her this information, she carefully memorised the door and the corridor attached to it.

_You’re right. It doesn’t matter._

_Security scans can be disabled,_ she countered.

He didn’t answer, and she was left staring at the frustratingly blank cliff of his thoughts as he allowed the device to take his neural imprint, and the heavy door whirred open.

Inside the vault, beyond rows and rows of gleaming racked blasters, the sole occupant of the room was an enormous Mandalorian man dressed in a threadbare uniform bearing insignias Rey couldn’t recognise. He was sitting at a low bench and diligently polishing a huge curved blade honed to a wicked point. Pocked with scars and staple marks from wounds that had once gaped open, he had lost half an ear at some point and a complicated tattoo ran down his neck from under the thick beard covering his jaw. When he looked up as Ren approached, his eyes were dry black stones.

“Knight Kylo,” he rasped in a quiet greeting. His voice sounded like he’d taken a blaster bolt to the throat in the past.

“Knight Corbon.” Ren answered flatly, and Rey felt a deep distrust sandpaper his thoughts. “Leave. I don’t want to be disturbed.”

A slow, placid grin pulled up the corners of the man’s mouth. Combined with his dead eyes, it reminded Rey of a corpse. “How could I disturb you, little prince?”

Kylo’s temper flared as predictably as if someone had flicked on a pilot light. “Your existence is more than enough,” he sniped, every syllable dripping with disgust. “Get out. _Now._ Unless you want to lose an arm to me this time.”

The seated man’s hand flexed around the hilt of his cumbersome weapon, and Rey saw two of his fingers were stumps. He stood and rolled his meaty shoulders, towering almost a half head over Kylo, and slung his blade into his other hand. There was a half minute of silence as the Mandalorian stared deep into the other man’s inscrutable visor. Tension gripped Rey around the middle, despite knowing rationally that she was far removed from the danger of this hulking mass. He just exuded the choking aura of death.

“Whatever you want, little prince,” the Mandalorian said eventually in the same crackling voice, with a soft laugh embedded in the last two words. “Our day will come.”

Kylo said nothing as the brute passed him with a silent, loping stride to exit the room, his lips pursed with an airless whistle and his eyes slack and empty. When the door clamped shut on his heels with an echoing clunk, she felt like someone had lifted a cold weight off her chest she hadn’t even realised was there.

 _Who - or what - was that?_ She wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to know.

 _A Knight._ Kylo’s thoughts were an unpleasant mix of irritation, pre-fight adrenaline, and bitter uneasiness.

 _Your second-in-command?_ she ventured.

 _No,_ he denied instantly and fervidly. _He was, and is, a nobody._ Sensing she was in no way satisfied with that response, he continued with a tug of aversion. _Corbon Ren. Snoke sent him to kill me as my final test before allowing me to become his pupil. I took his fingers, but my master must have foreseen some worth left in his treacherous hide and forbade me from killing him later._

She exhaled a long breath. _So your master sent an assassin to kill you, and then placed him beside you when he failed._

Kylo strode to a locker and pulled down the edge of one sleeve, allowing a reader to scan a small patch of skin just above the edge of his glove where Rey guessed there was a chip embedded. _Yes,_ he answered simply as the locker door beeped.

 _That’s barbaric,_ she pronounced, feeling vaguely ill when she thought about her own Master doing the same.

 _There was no point accepting me as a student if I wasn’t strong enough to survive such a test. What came after would certainly have killed me anyway._ There were no pangs of self-pity alongside this explanation, only clear-cut rationale. It felt like this was a justification he had held tight to his chest for a long time.

The narrow door swung open to reveal a clean, untouched First Order officer uniform, an assortment of what she could only guess were training apparatuses, a pair of blasters and a long, straight iron sword. He dragged a heavy spherical object out with a carelessly waved hand, and she recognised it from one of Luke’s holocrons as a Force sensitivity calibration tool. It clunked at his feet as dead weight without the Force to support it.

The sight of the sword leaning in the corner made her wonder how anyone could have lived through an assault by the eerily silent giant who’d just left.

_How did you defeat him?_

_Defeat?_ The locker slammed shut with a reverberating bang. _I fended him off. He cut the power to the base I was stationed on and came for me while I slept. We fought in the dark. He would have killed me in one stroke if I hadn’t sensed him in the Force._

Rey shuddered. Constantly looking over a shoulder, wondering from which direction the next terrifying attack would come. Nerves worn raw from over-exposure to hard realities of survival. It reminded her of the worst years on Jakku, when she’d had no protectors and very little means of protection. She hated that version of herself; full of fear and no concerns beyond her own nose. And a small, frustratingly persistent part of her wondered yet again how she’d managed to best someone who’d bested a monster like that Mandalorian.

 _If I hadn’t been injured, your situation would be very different_ , he answered her drifting thoughts with a touch of sneer.

 _If you hadn’t killed Han, you wouldn’t have been injured_ , she shot back instantaneously, feeling the wound on her heart threaten to break open again at the slightest nudge.

There was a sensation of movement in his thoughts at that. She couldn’t identify the actual emotion, it was buried deep behind a shield. Only that there had been a reaction.

She cast around for something to distract her from memories of smoky leather jackets in the following silence. Flexing her legs, she tried to get to her feet but fell back to the ground almost instantly.

 _I can move my body but I can’t see through my eyes while I’m in your head. How are you walking and seeing through your own?_ she asked. _It seems impossible to me._

_It’s not._

More silence. An open locker door was in his path and he kicked it shut. The locks whirred softly as they re-engaged.

_I can teach you how to do it._

She wouldn’t use the word ‘shy’, but he seemed… unsure. Or rather, certain only that her reaction would be a visceral and resounding ‘no’.

 _I’ll think about it_ , she answered after considering it briefly. It wasn’t as if it was treasonous to listen in on the thoughts of the enemy and borrow a technique or two. She was fairly sure.

He lifted the hefty sphere onto a bench and began fiddling with a hidden control panel on its top. His fingers moved thoughtlessly, and twice he had to reset the sequence. His mind was fuzzy with distraction. A small swell of something she could hesitantly call ‘satisfaction’ was ballooning through their link, though she was sure that associating a positive emotion with anything this man said, did or thought was foolish. But it kept expanding and expanding until it was impossible to ignore. He was swarmed by it, and she hadn’t even said yes. Just a reluctant promise to think about his offer had prompted this out of proportion response?

Too late, he realised her shock, and he clamped down on the feeling, hard. It burst and deflated just as quickly as it had sprung up.

“You do nothing by halves, do you?” She voiced her wondering realisation out loud. “Not just anger and pain, but everything.”

He was embarrassed. No, he was _mortified._ But she caught only the briefest hint at the feeling before another shield slammed into place over the top.

 _Calm down_ , _you strange man_ , she said through the bond. _You don’t need to feel bad about having strong feelings. I have strong feelings too. You’ve got plenty of other, more important things you should feel bad about._

His thoughts were blank, freshly sand-blasted. His hand went to his side and his knuckles began grinding ruthlessly into the tender, bruised flesh underneath.

Rey yelped at the short, sharp streak of pain that lacerated her ribs.

 _Stop that!_ she demanded. _What’s wrong with you! Why would you do that!_

Kylo’s hand fell away immediately, and Rey’s end of the connection was almost barrelled over by his shock. _You… felt that?_

_...Yes._

_We share physical sensation?_

Rey’s mouth firmed into a line, and she lifted her hand in order to give the back of it a hard pinch. She saw his same hand flex slowly, and he turned to sit down on a nearby low bench, holding his hands in front of his face as though he’d never seen them before.

_So you felt it when…_

_When you had yourself thrashed?_ she finished his sentence with no small amount of causticity. _Yes, I did. I felt my ribs break and my skin get flayed to bits. Thanks for that._

Shame, pure and acidic, seared his senses. Not for being responsible for causing her pain, but rather for being caught out as a weakling who couldn’t live in his own skin without the thoughts that tormented him being periodically stripped away. Crushing self-loathing clambered up quickly behind, the two emotions scrapping for dominance. In the physical world, Rey watched his head descend into his hands, fingers sliding across his scalp and pulling his face taut with a trembling exhale.

 _Leave. Now._ The emotions were already on their way to a snarling crescendo in their duet. It was a testimony to how quickly and violently they had seized control that he had not pulled down his shutters.

Something was making her chest tighten. Despite herself, despite everything the sensible, logical parts of her brain knew about his true nature and his dire need to be held to account for his crimes, she also knew this wasn’t something he should be punishing himself over. Her sense of fairness refused to shut up, as dearly as she wished it would.

She gave a short, put-upon sigh. _Kylo. Stop._

His head was a whipping duststorm now, and she was reminded for the umpteenth time what a precarious mental knife edge this man walked every waking moment. He was made of glass; shattered daily, remade, only to be shattered again. It was a small miracle he wasn’t actually insane.

_I am insane._

_No, you’re not,_ Rey countered rigidly, knowing full well she was contradicting what she’d shouted at him in a fit of pique a few days ago. But the moment she applied any thought to it whatsoever, she knew she’d been wrong. She thought hard about the spittle-soaked, twitching creatures she’d seen dragged off the dunes. Too many years of constant hunger and thirst, of nothing to see but desert plains, blasted by scorching wind, all of it eroding their wits down to the nub. Sun-mad, they’d been called. She’d been so desperately afraid she’d be mad too by the time her family returned. They wouldn’t recognise her. They’d certainly not want her.

 _That’s not you_ , she told him confidently, and conjured the strongest memories she had of his intrusion into her life. The first time she’d laid eyes on this black wraith, stalking her through the forests of Takodana. Up until that point it had all been a breath-stealing adventure, filled with derring-do and laughter and only the occasional brush with death. When he had deflected her blaster bolts so casually, pinning her arm with nothing more than a gesture, she’d known with terrifying certainty that she’d stumbled into a world that swallowed little scavenger nothings like her whole.

Or when she’d called the lightsaber into her hand on Starkiller, heartbreak gripping her so hard it was threatening to squeeze her in half. She’d had no idea what she was doing, only that something _must_ be done. He’d been almost bent double with an injury that would have left most men writhing on the ground, barely clinging to life. But there was a resilience in him, a raging defiance that had terrified her. All she could do was keep pulling herself out of his reach as if he was a fire consuming the forest.

 _That’s not what insane people do_ , she pointed out. _Insane people lay down and disintegrate. You don’t._

The storm in his head was still whirling, but its intensity was beginning to slacken and she could tell he was listening. She pressed on.

_If you feel guilty, then you aren’t insane. You can’t give in to it. One day you’ll have to own up to everything you’ve done, and you can only do that if you’re a real person. That’s the very least you owe General Organa._

She swallowed, hoping the mention of his mother wouldn’t set off a destructive cascade. But it seemed to have the opposite effect. The storm was abating. The jagged edges, while not smoothed exactly, weren’t shearing into his mind from every angle either.

She let out a heavy breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding in, her cheeks puffing out under the pressure.

He let his hands fall from his hair, dragging curtains over his face that tangled in front of his eyes. He, too, sighed heavily. There was still an imprint of regret echoing through his thoughts, too vague to be solidified into words but she could make an educated guess.

_You don’t owe anything to me, just so you know. There’s much more important people in the queue to demand apologies from you than me. And even if you did, you didn’t know about the bond or what it can do. So. That’s that. Alright?_

She could sense something brewing in his thoughts as a response, but she suddenly felt over-exposed. Like she’d said something stupidly damning. It was the feeling she’d gotten when she’d ridden her speeder past all the familiar landmarks and she’d looked up only to realise she didn’t know where she was.

 _I have to go,_ she said quickly, and made ready to pull herself out of his head.

 _Wait._ She saw him shift on his seat. His pointer fingers hooked together, and he pulled on them until one finger straightened and they flew apart, over and over.

“That’s not you either.” His actual voice was hoarse and fragmented, as though he hadn’t spoken in days. Abruptly, his head was filled to the utmost crevices with a memory of her, looming as if he’d unfurled an enormous sheet over a hangar bay wall and projected her image onto it. She recognised the location at once - snowy trees, lit by distant fires of a burning military base. It was the moment he’d had her pressed right up to the chasm, from his perspective. When he’d blurted out the desperate offer that had been chewing on him since she’d repelled his assault on her mind so forcefully.

She’d closed her eyes - actually closed them - in front of the enemy who almost had her over a ledge. His lucidity was fading and his entire world shrunk to the snowflakes melting in her eyelashes. He could _feel_ the Force swooping in at her call, cloaking and cladding her in thick armour, embracing her so tenderly with its blessing. When she opened her eyes again and saw himself reflected, he knew. He was a sick, twisted craven, made of nothing but brittle failure and she… she was worthy of the Light. Even when she was scared, or furious, she was carved from unassailable stone. Through his eyes, she was lit from within. 

And then, without warning, he snapped off his side of the connection. She quickly followed suit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things start thawing out a bit.


	5. Chapter 5

“Master Luke!” she shouted into the valley. “ _Master Luke!_ ” Her voice echoed off the serrated rocks in a cruel mockery of a reply. Her ears strained to pick out anything that could be an answer, but no. Only running water, birdsong, and the wind skating through thousands of leafy bushes.

She clambered to the top of a jutting verge and put her hands on her hips, surveying the landscape below. No caves she could see. No obvious signs of a camp, though a small brook snaked down the valley’s flank.

She raised a hand to her eyes as a shield and turned towards the sun. Nightfall came quickly on Ahch-To. There was only a few minutes of good light left in the day and her instincts were strictly warning her against trying to scale down the cliffside in the dark.

The weather was so temperate and water so plentiful that she could easily sleep rough if she had to. Though she’d finally been browbeaten into the habit of eating something twice (occasionally even three times!) a day, she saw little problem going without until she got back to the dwellings. A few berries from the stunted shrubs that grew in the rocks, a full canteen of water from the stream, and she’d call her subsistence sorted.

Carefully, she gouged another mark into the bark of a nearby tree, hoping that the trail she’d laid would be enough to guide her home without too much trouble. Casting her eyes about, she spotted a rocky overhang that seemed relatively dry. It would protect her from the worse of the morning dew, at least.

After she’d filled her canteen to the brim with sweet, clear water and filled a pocket with a dozen of the tart, tough little berries, she crawled in under the ledge and tried to get a comfortable position. With her back wedged up against the rock wall and knees curled to her chin, she just about managed it.

She unscrewed the tethered cap on her bottle and took a long, greedy pull of the delicious water. It was so lovely, and all free. She _still_ couldn’t get over it. Though she knew as soon as she’d started harping endlessly on the abundance of taps, _with actual water inside_ , on the Resistance base that she might as well have attached a strip-lit sign to her head that read ‘I am a desert rat! Pity me!’

Master Luke had been more understanding. He said he still caught himself sometimes holding a hand under a rippling stream in wonder.

She took another, more reserved sip, and watched the sky slowly streak with pinks and oranges. It really was paradise. And she was only here because of sheer dumb luck, that she’d been born with this gift she’d known nothing about. It was all thanks to Master Luke that she got to stay here, or learn anything at all. Without him, she’d still be so pitifully ignorant.

A sudden heat tightened her throat and prickled the corners of her eyes. He was going to tell her to go. He clearly didn’t want her around anymore, and this was just his way of saying so. He’d dump her back on the Resistance base until someone decided what to do with a failed Jedi -

 _No,_ she told herself. _You can’t think like that. He would never be so cruel._

She rubbed brusquely at her eyes with the back of her forearm, feeling stupid. She’d waited a lifetime for her parents. What was a few days for Master Luke?

A ripple in the Force. She sat bolt upright, thinking for one wild moment it was her teacher calling out. But the shape of the disturbance was one she’d come to recognise as familiar, at least when it was battering against her head. Intruding, relentless, painfully precise. With barely a few seconds to prepare, he was there.

She frowned. _Kylo._

The usual dance began. His rapid-fire perusal of her top-most thoughts almost completely masked his expert application of pressure on the lower subconscious.

An irritated wave rose up from her gut. Her shields were already straining at the seams and she wasn’t sure what pissed her off more; the fact that their skill gap when it came to mental warfare was still enormous, or that his invasion seemed almost thoughtless. Routine, even.

_Cut it out. That’s really getting old, you know._

He stopped. _Your shields are a little stronger_ , he remarked. _But still unsophisticated. I would know everything you didn’t want me to know if I really tried._

 _Oh?_ she snipped, pride stung. _I don’t remember you having much success last time._

_Last time was a surprise. You have a great deal of raw power. But you don’t know how to use it._

_Then why haven’t you cracked me open like a nut, if I’m so rubbish at it?_ she asked bitterly.

She sensed him hesitate for a moment. _Because you don’t know anything useful to us anymore. Our intel on the new Resistance headquarters is more accurate than yours._

She froze. A spy? There was a spy in the Resistance!

 _Yes, there is. By all means_ , _inform them immediately._ She could almost hear his eyes rolling. _Leia wouldn’t thank you for it. If she’s as good as she used to be, she already knows who they are, how to leverage their weaknesses, and was exploiting them as double agents before Hux even knew they’d reached the base._

An image of the baton-wielding ginger menace floated into her head.

Ah. Right. Another timely reminder that she didn’t know what any of these people were doing or why they were doing it, and it was probably best she didn’t either. Entirely without warning, the silly little fantasy she’d nurtured from time to time - the one where Leia Organa wrapped a warm arm over her shoulder and proclaimed her a hero to crowd of smiling faces - drifted across her thoughts. Horrified, she brushed it away but she knew it was too late. He’d seen it.

 _That’s what she looks like now_. There was no inflection on his thoughts, or none that she was capable of reading.

She shifted, rocks suddenly prodding into her back uncomfortably. _Yes. She’s wonderful_ , Rey replied honestly, thinking wistfully of the short time she’d spent hanging off Leia’s every word. _She’s one of the most wonderful people I know._

And since she was being honest about it, she added, _I wish she was my mother instead of yours._

There was a definite uptick in the intensity of his thoughts, but it was clouded. Deliberately obscured.

_Of course you do. You're fooled like all the rest. No doubt she wishes that too._

_I don’t think so._ But she left it at that, sensing dangerous territory. She wasn’t particularly in the mood for a battle.

She pulled a berry out of her shirt pocket and popped in her mouth, holding the tiny ball between her teeth for a moment before applying just enough pressure to split the skin. The juice washed pleasantly over her tongue with a sweet-and-tart tingling. They were delicious. Yet another wonder she’d never have known if she hadn’t left Jakku.

_I can taste that._

She halted her vigorous chewing, eyes widening. _What? Really?_

 _It’s bitter, slightly sweet. Right?_ He sounded like he couldn’t quite believe it himself.

She gave a short, surprised snort of laughter. The Force was forever finding ways to amaze her.

His mind immediately spun into high gear. _This should be examined._

There was few moments of silence. Curiousity quickly began to gnaw, and she decided to slip through the bond. He offered no resistance as he felt her take up residence behind his eyes, and unsurprisingly all his shields were already in place. His thoughts were a controlled skim back through his recollection of a holocron he seemed to have recently read on Force bonds and the translation of neural activity across space-time. It was skipping too lightly across the surface of his mind for her to glean much useful information, so she let him be and tapped into his physical senses instead.

He seemed to be exiting a large, open plan room, and she just barely caught a glimpse of strangely shaped machines that gleamed chrome. The distinctive thumps and grunts of hand-to-hand combat came from somewhere over his left shoulder. His eyeline was focused in the middle distance, though at the bottom of his vision she could she he was pulling on his gloves.

 _You were in the middle of training?_ She asked, though it felt a bit of a tedious question considering how obviously the answer was yes.

He answered her anyway. _I was finished for the day._

_How often do you train?_

_Twice a day cycle. When I rise, and after my duties are concluded. Why? Planning to let the Resistance know that too?_

She ran the tip of her tongue over her teeth, somewhat embarrassed. _No. I’m just curious._ Idiotically, blithely curious sometimes.

 _You didn’t even try to take the knowledge from my head directly_ , he observed.

She pushed on the boundary of her awareness until it butted up against his absurdly strong mental walls. _I think I’ll get further for the time being just by asking_ , she said resignedly.

There was a short lull. _You want to know things about me?_ he asked sharply.

She shrugged, and put another berry in her mouth. _I want to know everything about everything. But most of all the Force. I feel…_ She tapped an erratic pattern on her knee, searching for her words. _I’ve got to catch up. I need to become useful quickly._ The tapping became a frustrated fist knocked into her thigh. _And whatever else you are, despite what you’ve done, I might get more useful by watching you. You’re the only other Force user I actually know, aside from Master Luke._

And the only one currently speaking to her. She tightened her jaw, annoyed with herself for even thinking such a thing.

His wariness was replaced by righteous self-assurance. _He’s fled again, has he? The usual operating procedure for his kind._

She didn’t answer, but she hoped the enormous wall she’d just erected around the idea gave a strong enough hint that she didn’t want to talk about it.

_Why do you need to be useful?_

_To help stop the First Order, of course. I would’ve thought that was obvious._

_That’s not the real reason._

She shifted, trying to brush memories back into their corners. _It is._

_Don’t lie. Say it._

She closed her eyes, unable to prevent herself watching the horrific, nauseating image of the first true friend she’d ever known lying motionless in the snow. It had been seared into her vision at the time and now it haunted her with perfect clarity. The smoking stripe up his back, put there by a power she was barely beginning to comprehend in herself. He shouldn’t have been there, and wouldn’t have been if it wasn’t for her.

_The traitor who tried to rescue you._

_His name is Finn. And he might not walk again without a mech frame, if he wakes up at all._

_You think you could have prevented that._

She rubbed a rough hand over her temple, as if she could knead the sight out of her mind’s eye. _If I’d just - thrown you, or something. Been quicker to understand what was going on._

_He chose to betray the First Order, and he chose to stand and defend you. I doubt he would choose differently if asked to choose again._

She was silent, discomforted.

_Feel guilty if you want. But you were in the throes of your Force awakening and unable to control your power. He had no chance of defeating me, but he didn’t run. Accept those facts. Find better reasons to be useful._

_How about to prevent you from hurting anyone like that ever again?_ she replied caustically, hating that Finn probably would have agreed with the advice given by his own assailant.

_Better than chaining yourself to the past._

Back on board the spaceship she assumed was still the Finaliser, though in reality could be any number of interchangeable First Order destroyers, she saw him round a corner to a high ceiling room that looked disturbingly similar to any given Resistance mess hall. Troopers carried trays covered in compressed, laser-rationed cubes of meat and vegetables, while officers sat apart from the rabble with plates covered in food that was actually identifiable as such. One or two even sipped what she guessed was fruit juice, an untold luxury on a starship.

There was distinctly less clamour than the Resistance mess, which was perpetually loud with joking camaraderie and even occasionally a punch-up. She’d always found it fascinating, and a bit overwhelming. Too many people stuffed into one place.

The little threads of chatter that did exist died down to virtually nil as Kylo walked past, as if he was emitting an audio dampening field. The responses he generated seemed to be a mix of fear, distrust, and awe, at a ratio of about 50:30:20 in that order.

Not long after she’d returned to the base in the wake of Starkiller’s pulverisation, rumour of her new-found abilities spread like a contagion, infecting every glance that turned her way. She remembered the nervously shifting eyes of some flight techs she’d come to ask for some spare power couplings for the Falcon. Their odd silence. She realised she recognised that ratio because she’d seen it before.

She ducked her head into her knees, banishing the image of their faces with all her strength.

_They’ll hate you because they don’t understand you. You’ll get used to it._

She shook her head in fruitless denial. _That’s impossible._

_I did._

Rey left her forehead resting on her knees as she watched a group of unhelmed troopers part to allow Ren to walk straight down the middle, their bodies angled away as if he were a terrible accident they were doing their best not to see. A twinge of something was circling her gut. As she did some quick maths, an uncomfortable question kept rotating to the surface, try as she might to keep it underneath.

_Sixteen years, going by Galactic Standard._

Of course, he’d heard it anyway, despite her attempts to keep it hidden. She really didn’t know why she was wondering how long it had been since someone had smiled at Kylo bloody Ren, and she really, _really_ wished he hadn’t answered, because now it strickened her without warning. Sixteen years. It was all too close to home.

 _You’re not me._ There was a tugging in his thoughts, like he was searching them for the correct explanation. _I was a freak even before my Force-sensitivity came. Your experience will be different._

 _You don’t know that._ She ground the heels of both hands firmly into her eye-sockets, annoyed at her moment of needless emotional fragility. _And I wasn’t thinking of myself anyway._

He came to a halt in the middle of the hall, causing the officers seated nearby to exchange tense, silent glances.

 _Although I am worried about how I’ll have to live from now on_ , she amended after a moment.

He started walking again, upping the pace. There was a mental turmoil he was doing his utmost to prevent her sensing, but he didn’t succeed entirely. When he spoke again, Rey could swear his shields felt a little less opaque than usual.

 _Would you give up your Force and go back to being normal, if you could?_ he asked.

She sucked in a sip of cool, twilight air. Maybe once, when she’d first grabbed Luke’s lightsaber and wanted nothing more to unsee everything she’d seen. But now…

 _Never,_ she answered emphatically. _Never!_

_Then you’ll learn to live with everything else._

Rey slowly interlocked her fingers over her knees and rested her chin in the hammock they made. She realised, startlingly, that he was right. A little leaden knot that had been growing in her chest loosened.

He came to a stop near a window, through which she saw dozens of white-suited kitchen staff bustling about their duties. A nearby drudge scrubbing trays nearly jumped out of his skin when they spotted Kylo leaning an elbow on the counter.

“Find the Quartermaster,” Kylo barked at him through the mask’s distortion, and the poor sod fled instantly to comply. He returned in moments with a nervous older man in tow, who was clutching a holopad like it was an aegis.

“Lord… Lord Ren! This is - your meal wasn’t due to be sent up for another hour -”

“I want it now,” Kylo interrupted. “Not the usual. Give me the Admiral-grade Alpha and Beta sets,” he ordered imperiously.

“Yes, sir. At once -” The Quartermaster turned away to snap his fingers and feverishly waggle his eyebrows at another underling.

“And General Hux’s Corellian wine,” he added in an afterthought. “I know he hides it in here somewhere.”

All the colour drained from the Quartermaster’s face. “Sir, I - the General will not be pleased if I…” The knuckles on the fingers gripping the holopad had gone pure white.

Kylo’s only answer was heavy silence. The man’s expression crumbled. “Of course. At once.”

_He’s terrified either you or that General are going to kill him. Poor man._

Kylo tapped his leather-clad fingers on the countertop, and Rey could feel his miniscule fuse already beginning to burn.

“Hux will never know of it. There will be no repercussions,” he snapped. “Have a droid bring everything I’ve asked for to my quarters _._ Now _go._ ”

She considered giving him a flea in his ear over his incessant need to terrorise absolutely everyone, but all in all, that had been almost civil by Kylo Ren standards. She decided to leave it.

 _You have a usual meal you eat?_ she asked instead as he started back for his quarters. Some of the landmarks he passed were becoming familiar.

_A calibrated liquid blend of proteins, lipids and minerals. Optimal for muscle composition._

_Oh._ She thought about portions, and the interminable dullness of eating the exact same thing every single day.

 _It’s not meant to excite me. It’s meant to keep me at peak efficiency._ An image floated into his head of a greyish drink waiting on his table every night, and the thick, bland taste he knew to expect. _But yes,_ he conceded. _It’s… dull._

She chewed on a smattering of berries to chase out the lingering impression of the foul ‘blend’. A thought struck her.

 _Taste this,_ she said, and took a huge swig of water.

_Taste what?_

She frowned and took another swig, letting the fluid swish over her tongue for a moment before swallowing.

_Is it water in that canteen?_

_Well, yes, but, isn’t it amazingly good?_

_It’s just water._

Rey worried at her bottom lip with her teeth. It tasted like nectar from the gods to her, but a faint chant of _scavenger, desert rat_ started up somewhere in the back of her head. She quickly screwed the cap back on. 

_It is. Never mind._

She got the distinct sense Kylo was _examining_ her, or maybe investigating was a better description, and she felt the tips of her ears heat with humiliation.

 _Never mind, I said!_ she all but shouted into his head, and added a strong mental shove for good measure. The absolute last person she wanted sitting in judgement was the one whose thoughts on her shabbiness she could actually hear.

To her relief, the shove was enough to disengage his subtle probe. For a moment she wondered if she’d pushed too hard when she felt his side of the connection ripple. Both of them consciously decided to redirect their attention.

He reached the recessed door that stood alone at the expiration of a dead-end corridor. Definitely, the first three numbers were five-six-one and the next three were almost certainly four-four-seven. The rest was still a frustrating jumble, but she stowed the information securely anyway.

 _You do realise I can change the code whenever I like,_ he thought with an air of irritating apathy.

_And you do realise that’s a Mark 12 Touchstone Industrial holo-lock, which means that even with a partial defunct code, I could bypass it by splicing the motherboard with a Mark 10 and a sequence generator?_

Generously, she supplied the memory of her performing the trick exactly as she described inside a few wrecks on Jakku that still had residual power. There was no response to that except a vague squirm of unease, and she chortled victoriously into the still evening air.

_Don’t worry. The First Order seems good at crushing the free will out of its underlings. I doubt any of them would dare even if they knew how to do it. And if I ever board your ship again, I’ll be worried more about staying alive than rifling through your rooms._

He clicked the release on his helmet and paused on the threshold. _If you ever come here again, don’t try to take the bridge. And do not engage Knight Corbon, at any cost._

She didn’t quite know what to make of that statement. Before she could figure out how to press him for an explanation, he had crossed into his quarters and walled off that section of his mind.

He stowed his mask in its usual, bizarrely ritualistic place of honour by the door, and she took the opportunity to examine the empty space he called home. The whole room contained a whopping four pieces of furniture despite being larger than the average Resistance barracks dorm several times over. A table topped with black glass polished to a mirror sheen was accompanied by single chair, which was rather telling. A lower, wider chair sat apart alongside a substantial cabinet built into a wall. The bed wedged in a corner was dwarfed by all the nothingness around it but still generously large by her standards, and the thin mattress was made up with dark grey sheets. A droid obviously maintained the room, judging by the surgical severity of cleanliness.

He shrugged out of his surcoat, his vision going black for a moment as the heavy fabric passed over his head. He slung it carelessly over the end of the bed.

 _What’s behind that door?_ She pointed the attention of her thoughts towards the closed panel on the other side of the room.

He tightened up, both mentally and physically. _My meditation chamber._

_Can I see it?_

_No._

Before she could respond either way, the door hushed open to admit a rolling silver droid carrying two trays groaning with food. It delivered its bounty to the table, joined by a tall black canister it produced from a separate compartment, then was gone without so much as a chirp.

Kylo hooked the chair with his boot and pulled it out with practiced ease. As he sat down, Rey could feel her mouth water at the mere sight of the colourful spread.

A gleaming set of silver cutlery accompanied one of the trays, and Kylo picked up the fork.

 _You’re actually going to eat_ , Rey wondered with faint amazement.

_Yes. Why wouldn’t I?_

_I don’t know. I thought perhaps you just absorbed the souls of your victims, or something._

He speared the closest morsel but didn’t bring it to his mouth, twisting the fork on the plate. His thoughts were a burbling montage, difficult to read. Rey thought she saw faces, crying, sneering, murderous, terrified. Flickering red light. She heard her own distant voice, raised in a devastated wail.

_Monsters still eat._

She didn’t really have an answer for that. He brought the fork to his mouth and began to chew.

_I want to know how accurately we read the other’s senses. Do you taste this?_

Rey concentrated, pulling her senses back to her own body. A warm, gamey taste was developing at the front of her tongue.

 _I do._ Rey shivered with awe. Kylo Ren was who knew how many light years away, and she could taste what he was eating. The Force was the most amazing thing in the universe.

 _We agree on something then. What about this? Describe the taste._ The fork hovered midair for a moment, before diving towards a side dish of purplish vegetables.

She waited a moment, letting the flavours transition.

_Spicy, a bit bitter._

There was a mirrored assessment in his thoughts. Something was stirring in him, almost eager. She was beginning to sense he was compelled to ferret out details in everything until he could piece together a greater picture, and she supposed it naturally followed that this quirk in the Force, despite no doubt being a risk to his secrets, was no exception.

He swallowed, casting his eyes over the second tray. They stopped on a dish of meat strips wrapped in a thin, yellow leaf, and Rey felt a tickle of revulsion pass through the bond.

 _And this._ He paused, before bringing a segment to his lips quickly and shoving in his mouth, as if to prevent him from changing his mind. Disgust pulsed in waves as he chewed.

She examined the taste. Sharp, tingling, with maybe a hint of sweetness. Not bad, really.

_Tastes like a swig of motivator fluid._

_What? Not at all. I think your precious Darkness has just corrupted your tongue._

_No._ He grimaced, and Rey saw he was debating whether to spit it out, before he decided to swallow with difficulty. _That leaf has always tasted like some kind of foul chemical to me._ There was a brief, muffled image of a smaller person sitting at a table, looking down at a soup filled with chopped yellow leaves and feeling their stomach heave. But it was gone before Rey could question it.

 _However, you’re clearly not the same._ He leaned back in his chair, crossing his legs at the ankle and idly scraping the tines of the fork along the edge of a plate. _We may share sensation but we retain our own predispositions. There’s no record of a phenomenon like this in the texts. This is destiny at work for some purpose,_ he concluded with vehement confidence. It was impossible to tell whether the idea pleased or angered him.

Rey recoiled from the choice of word, _‘destiny’_. That was something the Skywalkers of the universe had to contend with, not nameless orphans from the desert. Sure, her fortunes had improved wildly of late, but she was still a nobody and had no delusions otherwise. Just a scavenger who happened to be connected to the Force, who tripped and stumbled her way into a different life.

And besides, what possible destiny could the Force envision that would rope her to Kylo Ren? They were mortal enemies - it did not seem like a very productive destiny if they were certain to try and lop each other’s heads off if they ever met.

At that, an idea clicked. Perhaps that was the entire point. She had no chance of getting to him while he was stowed in the belly of a destroyer, and he still had no idea where in the galaxy she was. She hoped. If they couldn’t meet each other in person and conclude their duel once and for all, maybe -

 _The Force found a way for us to kill each other?_ He finished the thought, and she tsked under her breath. Clearly her stream of consciousness was still an open file for him to read. _That occurred to me also,_ he admitted casually, dragging his fork around the circumference of the plate. _I did consider trying to kill you using this._

Rey’s fingers tightened on her trouser leg while something obnoxious flapped in her stomach. _I’m glad the feeling is mutual, then._

_I gave the idea up almost immediately. Too many unknown variables. We neither of us know yet if our lives are also connected. Crushing your mind may kill me too. We are better off retaining a truce and investigating exactly how this bond works._

_For now,_ Rey added, trying to project more cool confidence than she actually felt.

 _For now,_ he echoed. His scraping was producing a nerve-jangling noise. _There will be time for other plans later._

Rey swallowed, and debated the merits of resurrecting her abandoned idea of trying to force Ren into an airlock.

 _Bad plan,_ he answered matter-of-factly. _The airlocks on this ship are triggered remotely. You’d need to control at least two other officers to make it work._

Her eyes closed and her jaw worked in noiseless aggravation.

_I would suggest trying to seize up my airways while I slept, but I rarely sleep and you’re also impossible not to detect. Good luck._

A tense sigh whistled through her lips. _Let’s just shelve all of that for now, shall we?_

He emanated agreement. Sitting up properly, he dragged a tray closer with a hooked finger. Rey felt his revulsion return full force as his eyes brushed over the offending yellow leaves.

_Do you have any water left?_

Rey shook her canteen. _Plenty. Why?_

_Drink. It might get rid of this taste._

Rey’s eyes narrowed at the presumptive command. _It may have escaped your notice, but I’m not one of your drones to order about._

The fingertips of his free hand ran idly over the groove of the scar on his face, though they moved away as soon as he’d realised she’d noticed.

_I’ve never thought you were._

_I told you, I’m not afraid of you._

_I know. You’re -_ and here, Rey saw a myriad of emotional wisps, as if he were trying out each for the best fit. _Unlike others,_ he settled on.

She ran her her tongue over her teeth, before deciding to unscrew the cap.

They continued with dinner. First Order admirals ate the kind of food she imagined kings and queens sitting down to - never had she tasted such a gamut of flavour in one sitting. Rich, oily gravies, fresh and crispy vegetables, delicately flaking fish. Half the stuff on the tray she only knew existed because she’d read and reread an ancient flimsy Coruscant menu she’d found on a scavenge until its corners were soft and worn. It was literally the stuff her dreams used to be made of.

As for the proxy through which she had access to this smorgasbord, she discovered that his emotions roiled pleasantly when he ate something spicy, he scraped most of the heavy sauce off roasted nerf because he preferred the taste of its natural juices, and he couldn’t get enough of green beans.

 _You like food,_ she realised suddenly. _You don’t just put stuff in your mouth and be done with it. You actually like it._

He continued to chew a mouthful of the purplish greetzap, as she learned the earthy vegetable was called directly from his memory. There was hesitation clouding his thoughts, and then it parted abruptly, as if he’d made the decision to ignore it.

 _As a child, I was never in one place for long. I had to eat whatever was provided by the planet that housed us. It was about the only thing I liked about travelling._ There was a frisson of imagery at this; a child’s upwards perspective of a table made for adults, the only familiar shape a brown head full of braids, moving in constant animation but never looking at him.

Rey’s hand came to her mouth unconsciously. He hadn’t burnt out every trace of his mother. A sudden impulse seized her - maybe she could use this access to his mind to probe for other good memories of her, maybe it could instigate an ounce of self-reflection -

The knife dropped to a plate with a jarring clang.

_You take one glimpse and think you know how to leverage me, like all the rest. If you think memories of that woman would dissuade me from my path, you’re naive. Don’t try to manipulate me with dribbling sentimentality._

A tiny barb of resentful remorse stung her. She tried to ignore it, and changed tack. _Why do you drink that sludge, day in, day out, when clearly you hate it?_ She threw the question at him like it was an accusation.

His mind was cold and retracted. _I told you. The Dark does not need to cultivate a palate in their apprentices, only strength in body and mind. There is no use for personal whims and weaknesses on the road to true power._

Something didn’t ring true in that statement. Like a spring stabiliser installed upside down. Rey applied a bit of thought, and then shook her head.

 _You mean Snoke,_ she corrected. _It was Snoke that cultivated you. If you turned to the Dark side, it was because he chose it for you. If he’d told you to become a Senator or a pilot, you’d be those things instead, I imagine._

The fork was gripped in a sudden fist. Heat slithered back into his emotions. _I am not a puppet. I make my own choices._

_Do you? Really and truly? Could you get on a ship and leave right now?_

He was silent, though she could hear his breathing turning jagged.

 _I thought not,_ she said with a tinge of vicious righteousness. _You’ve got no more free will than a spanner._

There was a loud scrape as the chair was violently pushed back, and a plate went flying into the wall. Rey rolled her eyes scornfully.

_Your temper is ridiculous!_

_I will not listen to treason. My teacher is wise. I won’t stray from the path._

He had begun pacing, and his mind was blistering. Thoughts kept appearing and disappearing like they were attached to rubber ropes, pulled to full tension and then released. Something, some idea kept trying to swim to the surface and he was beating it back into the dark with burning, vengeful, dogmatic willpower. She caught the word ‘grandfather’ and very little else.

_This is right. My course is true. This is all I have._

Rey could sense that the entire table was in danger of becoming a crisscrossed wreck of lightsaber lines.

 _Instead of throwing a fit, stop and think for a minute. There is no treason inside the safety of your own head._ Rey closed her eyes against the emotional derby, feeling it flow through their connection and knock her own equilibrium off-kilter. _The only person listening is me, and I’ve got no one to tell._

He crouched by his bed, hands fisting in his sheets and forehead pushing hard into the thin mattress. In no time at all his head had become a writhing mess, guilt layered on rage layered on self-loathing, all undercut with a thin, toxic strata of fear. Appealing to his rationality at this point seemed futile.

Despite the unpleasant second-hand emotions wafting through her head, something else pricked at Rey unexpectedly. He was so… _fragile._ Outwardly he was a blood-stained weapon of war, but his internals ran on complicated, intricate mechanisms, full of mismatched gears, ruptured heat sinks and hairline fractures. The projection of Kylo Ren was not the same as the one who lived underneath. And she was probably the only person in the galaxy who knew it.

She twisted her fingers. He was also a killer and the enemy, she curtly reminded herself. This disconnect was the result of living with murder and bloodshed on your conscience.

_That’s right. I am strong. The Darkness gives me power and Supreme Leader teaches me how to wield it. This is what I deserve. Don’t you dare pity me, scavenger._

One of those statements didn’t quite match up with the others. She could feel herself failing to keep her own seesawing emotions in check.

 _You keep saying all that ‘Dark is strength’ nonsense, but I don’t think you believe it,_ she bristled. _Or maybe you once did, but you’re lying to yourself now. It’s plain as day. I think the only thing you actually believe is that it’s what you deserve._

He wound his fists into the sheets, and Rey could feel a snarl building to a scream at the back of his throat.

_I don’t want to hear this. I want to be free of this. I thought I was going to be free._

Rey’s gut spasmed with a sudden pain. He wasn’t being specific, and his mind was too scrambled to read his thoughts perfectly. But she saw the beloved crags of Han’s face, could smell his leather and boot polish in wisps of memory, and she could make a good guess. A huge lump rose in her throat, threatening to choke her with miserable outrage.

 _You’re so bloody stupid, Kylo Ren,_ she declared angrily through a mist that was rapidly thickening into tears. _You’re a complete and colossal, absolutely unprecedented moron. Why would you ever think killing your parents would help free you from pain?_

He shook his head into the sheets, unable to answer. A memory hit Rey in that moment with shining clarity; when Han had offered her a job in his gruff, sideways manner after they’d landed on Takodana. The warmth and happiness she’d felt. The overwhelming gratitude that this hero of her childhood tales actually cared about whether she lived or died.

 _Why did you hate him! Don’t you know how great he was?_ she shouted into his head. _You said it yourself. He was the closest I’ve ever gotten to -_

She didn’t finish with words, instead letting the memories flow through her in a grief-stricken current. A guiding influence who liked her, and respected the things she could do - a type of person in her life she could easily count without troubling a second hand. Who taught her and chided her and laughed at her. Tried, with a standoffish charm, to keep her out of harm’s way. As tormentingly close as she’d ever come to having a dad. She buried her face in her hands and dissolved into heavy, painful sobs.

_I didn’t hate him. Snoke told me I had to choose. The Light is poisoning me, so I had to kill it. He told me it was destiny._

“He _lied!”_ Rey cried out with a choked voice into the starry darkness, in a passion that brooked no argument. “He lied, he lied, _he lied!”_

“I know,” he replied into his bedsheets, and with a shock that penetrated even the lead blanket that threatened to crush her, she realised he was sobbing too. Keening, loud, tormented sobs. 

They wept together for a time. Their thoughts were a shared jumble, zigzagging aimlessly through painful scenes. She was being lifted onto Han’s shoulders one second, small fingers nervously clamped to his ears, the next she was curled around her holopad in her AT-AT, reading about the smuggler’s code. And the next she had a red lightsaber in her hand, and Han was gently touching her face.

At some point, he’d loved him too, she realised defeatedly. Though it burnt a hole in her heart to acknowledge it, he’d done as much damage to himself killing Han as he’d done to her, and everyone else who’d loved him. He was just too brainwashed to realise it most of the time, and too scared of waking up from his sleepwalk to face the devastating reality.

 _You’re so utterly, uselessly stupid,_ she repeated, though there was more sadness than fury in the accusation now. She felt her tears slowing, leaving a hollow calm in their wake.

He was silent. He slowly let his fists unclench, and turned to sit on the floor with his back against the bed. Rey heard his breath coming in short wheezes as he fought to regain control.

Kylo was looking down at his knees, his emotions a frayed, miserable tangle. Against the backdrop of his sterile, empty room, he looked like a black insect who had gotten trapped in the vent of a starship, transported millions of light years away from anything resembling its home.

She took a deep breath that expanded her lungs to capacity, then let it out with a slow, shaky sigh. With a hand that was still slightly trembling in the aftershocks of her tears, she slid it inside her vest onto her shirt-covered shoulder, and squeezed gently. She hoped it would translate across the bond.

He stiffened like a board instantly.

 _What was that? Why did you do that?_ he immediately questioned.

_It felt right, so I did it. That’s all._

After a moment of tense scrutiny, during which Rey felt him indecisively try to prod her thoughts for hidden motives, he relaxed.

_You need to stop lying to -_

She broke off her own thought with a sharp intake of breath. He had slipped his own hand inside his tunic and squeezed the opposite shoulder, so gently it felt like a ghost had tried to get her attention. The imprint of his hand was far broader than her own, and for some reason that fact caused a tiny, confused jolt to run down her spine.

Before she could say anything else, he’d risen and run two hands through his hair, pulling his face taut and coughing loudly. He shook out his arms and flexed his fingers, as though dislodging the dust of the whole episode.

Rey stretched her legs out in front of her, then pulled them back in. A compulsion to move, to _run_ seized her. All of a sudden she felt desperate to escape his head. She cut the cord without a word, senses all returning in a rush. Pushing herself out of the little nook, she got up and broke into a dash towards the formless black mass of the treeline.

He did not chase her across the bond.

Night had well and truly fallen but the moon was bright. She pushed her awareness of the Force outwards, and between the two she felt fairly confident she wouldn’t break an ankle. So she ran, letting the cool air whip her skin and empty her head. Her heart pounded as it was forced to keep up, and soon all she thought about was the comforting burn of her muscles. She clambered up and over a rock and stood at the peak panting.

What was happening? Was she really feeling even an ounce of empathy for the murderer of Han Solo? Her stomach clenched with guilt. Finn with his back sliced open, asleep in a glass tube. General Organa, whose acerbic quips and warm, lively eyes masked more grief than any one person should ever be asked to bear, and bore it with stony, indefatigable grace. Would she ever be able to face those two again if they knew she was… well, _chatting_ wasn’t right, but at the very least _communicating_ with the source of their torment?

She looked up at the brilliant spread of stars. There was a voice in her head that sounded suspiciously like her absent Master.

_You know it’s not as simple as you once thought._

She had always been good at fixing things. With enough patient curiousity, any machine was understandable. Instinctively, she’d always known that even the smallest detail couldn’t be ignored when it came to puzzling out a bigger problem. A tiny chip in an axle gear meant her speeder wouldn’t turn left. Errors in the base code of a nav system meant another crashed carcass for the sands of Jakku to digest.

But she also knew that almost any broken thing was salvageable, even when everyone else assumed it wasn’t. That axle gear, once shaved down to size, became the pin hinge on the roof of her AT-AT.

Everything was something that _could_ be something else. Not just what it had failed to be.

She rubbed vigorously at her eyesockets with the heels of both hands. All she was willing to admit for the time being was that Kylo Ren was a more complex machine than she’d first assumed. Anything beyond that sent pinpricks of shame up and down her spine.

When she found the black silhouette of her little hideaway again, she held a brief, vigorous internal debate while she caught her breath. By all rights, she should settle down for the night, go to sleep, and concentrate on searching for Luke in the morning. There was no good reason to keep ‘visiting’ Kylo Ren if she didn’t think she could make a dent in his mental fortress. There was, in fact, plenty of reason to think that it would be him penetrating _her_ shields eventually.

But on the other hand, he knew things. Things she didn’t know, and felt afraid to ask Master Luke to teach her. Instruction on mental defences would require her Master to visit her head, and she dreaded that one nudge in the wrong direction would break his trust in her forever. He might see her power in its rawest form and be repulsed by her lack of control over it, or the doubts that left her mind in conflict. Kylo Ren was the enemy, but she had to reluctantly admit that she was used to him in her head. Somewhat. And it didn’t matter in the least what he thought of her, so long as he was willing to teach. 

She sighed, realising her mind had been made up before she’d even laid out the arguments. If this was her path to knowledge, she would take it. In some ways, she was glad she hadn’t been a Jedi long enough to be able to talk herself out of it.

Reacquainting herself with the rock wall, she reached out along the paths of the Force. Unsettlingly, she realised how easy it had become to recognise his signal in the dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Meaty chapter today. I hope whoever is reading is enjoying it. Kudos and comments are loved and appreciated.


	6. Chapter 6

She touched his mind quietly, almost tentatively, and he let her in without resistance. He seemed to have had a similar compulsion as her; his lightsaber was out and he was working through some punishing drills. All the empty space in his quarters suddenly made sense.

They didn’t exchange words while he continued, and she was relieved he did not ask for any explanation of her abrupt departure. It occurred to her that there would be few people who better understood snap changes in temper.

She watched his thoughts and motions with keen interest. This was a lightsaber practice she’d never read in Master Luke’s books. It seemed far more advanced than any technique she’d been using, involving extremely well-timed powerdowns of the saber as he swung it across his body. The uncomfortable thought occurred to her that it was probably all Dark side techniques, though she couldn’t really see how ways to swing a saber could belong to Light or Dark.

_It’s neither. It’s just a useful drill._ That was the only answer she got before his concentration returned to what he was doing. It was clearly a good workout if nothing else; he was breathing hard and moving so fast his saber was dragging illusionary red semi-circles in the air.

She noticed he’d removed his gloves and pushed his tunic sleeves up to the elbow. In the brief glimpses she got as his arms flashed back and forth, she saw the distinctive corrugated skin of burn scars. She had more than one herself; enduring lessons in what was and wasn’t safe to touch after it had been baking in the Jakku sun. It was proof that his skill with a blade was the result of blood and toil.

She wanted to learn. She wanted to do what he was doing, as skilfully as he was doing it. The sense of _rightness_ when it came to Force was difficult for her to explain. It was a compulsion that consumed her like thirst.

He swung the saber in a graceful figure-of-eight, then powered down the blade. It returned to the hook on his belt. She felt bereft; cheated out of more time to try and memorise the patterns.

_Don’t try it. You’ll just cut yourself in half._

_I’m doing pretty well with the saber these days,_ she replied with a little indignation.

_You’re barely even a novice. I’ve been training with a saber since I was eleven. Do what Luke tells you to do._

Rey’s eyebrows raised. _I’m surprised to hear_ you _say that._

He paused, and Rey sensed him arranging his words. _He knows what he’s doing in this one particular respect._

During their exchange, his hands had gone to his throat. Casually, automatically, he was pulling open his tunic closures from the top down. On Ahch-To, Rey’s eyes widened in alarm.

_Ah, what are you doing?_

His hands whipped back down to his sides, clenched in identical fists. _I was… I forgot. Never mind._ Unspoken, his mind reflexively showed an image of his shower, and in the millisecond before the thought disintegrated Rey gleaned that he always took one about now.

Oh. Of course. He ate, he got burned, he bled, he presumably sweated. Of course he also took showers. Rey swallowed. The knowledge was unsettling and she had no idea _why_. Her stomach had contracted to about the size of a nut.

Embarrassed, she hurried to reply. _I’ll leave you in peace then. Sorry,_ she added, for some entirely unfathomable reason.

He looked over at the ‘fresher door, hands restlessly opening and closing. _I would like to try something out, if you agree to it. A test for myself. Ten minutes at the most._

Rey’s eyebrows came together, and she ignored her dry throat.

_What test?_ she asked. She was glad she hadn’t had to say that out loud because she was pretty sure it would have come out far less cool than she would’ve liked.

He paused, or rather was silent while his thoughts jostled. _Manipulating senses. That is, whether I can shut you out completely from my sight or sound._

Rey tried to process exactly what he was asking, when he interrupted her thoughts loudly.

_Never mind. Just an idea and a poor one. Stop thinking about it._

_I was going to say I don’t mind. As long as you’re confident you can do it._

He seemed to not quite know what to do with this information. As if he hadn’t really expected an answer at all.

_How about you make sure it’s possible before anything else?_ Rey proposed quickly.

_Yes,_ he swiftly agreed.

Rey felt his mental strength drawing inwards. His focus became entirely devoted to creating a boxed enclosure around her in his head. It was a powerfully specific barrier, and after a few moments, she could register only blackness from his end of the link.

_What do you see?_ he asked.

_Nothing._

_Can you feel this? I’m biting the skin on my knuckle._

Rey rubbed her hand instinctively. _Not a thing._ She tested her energy against the blockade. _I can still hear, though._

_I can’t prevent your access to every sense. Yet._

Something twigged for Rey. _You interfered with my perception._ _Like you did in the meeting with the ginger worm._

_Yes._

_Teach me how?_. The words appeared fully formed on the top of Rey’s thoughts as if they’d fallen out whole from the back of a dusty mainframe.

His emotions rippled in a powerful response, but he kept them under a tight leash. _Later._

She heard a door panel sliding into place and the distinctive whirring sound of fluophosphate lights flickering to life. After a moment, the soft ‘pop’ of buttons being pulled free from their fasteners joined it, and the deprivation of her other senses meant it sounded like he was pulling off his clothes millimetres from her ear.

Rey realised she hadn’t really thought this through. Kriff. Had not thought it through at _all_. Even without sight, her mind was going to fill in the blanks perfectly well on its own.

She took a deep breath. Right, there were many things she could put up with, but knowing Kylo Ren was looking on as she created mental sketches of his naked body was not one of them. Quickly, efficiently, and trying quite hard to turn off her own ears, Rey began to meditate. She found the offending thoughts and put them in a very small, very tightly locked box, and then pitched the box as far away from her conscious mind as she could throw it. She hoped that had been enough.

He had mercifully stopped undressing and she could now hear running water.

_A water shower?_ she said, grasping for something to move her attention towards. _You really are the most elite of the First Order thugs._

_Water showers are standard units for any officer ranked above a certain grade._

_My first water shower was after I joined the Resistance. It was like stepping into a dream._

She shook her head in annoyance. Why had she told him that? It was completely irrelevant to anything.

There was another volatile ripple in his thoughts, and she sensed something had triggered his self-loathing. It was difficult to pin down what it was considering she had no idea what had caused it, and it was gone within moments so she focused instead on maintaining her own meditative state.

_If you joined us, you would have your own quarters. With all of this._

Rey stifled a wave of disgust. _You must have lost your mind if you think I’d ever join the First Order._

There was no surprise at her answer in his thoughts. _Just telling you the truth._

Rey shook her head, perturbed. _Why would I be given the quarters of an officer?_

_If you joined as my apprentice, you would be feared and respected everywhere you went. Every resource would be at your fingertips. You’d be trained in the finest facilities credits can buy._

_And in return, all you ask is my undying loyalty to Snoke and his evil madness?_ Rey snorted out loud. _Not a chance. I can live without being feared and respected if I can keep my own conscience._

She heard the water splatter on the metallic floor, as if he’d shaken wet hair out of his eyes. Her meditative state was disturbed only momentarily by a clench in her stomach.

_The Dark side is truly powerful. You have no idea how much stronger you would become._

_No,_ she said instantly and definitively. _Not in a million years. Look at what it did to you. If that’s what that power does, I don’t want any part of it._

There was a tiny flicker of something warm in response to that. Embarrassment? Gratitude? It was so alien a feeling in him that she couldn’t identify it.

_So you swallow the Jedi lies wholesale then?_ he went on quickly. _Without question?_

Rey shifted uncomfortably. _I don’t swallow anything wholesale. I don’t know enough yet. The Jedi code is honourable, but… I can't- I think it’s a tricky life to lead. I don’t think I could ever strip myself of all emotion._

_Exactly!_ he answered fiercely, almost triumphantly. _It’s an unnatural way to live._

_Yes, but none of that means absolute devotion to the Dark side is any better!_ she retorted. _I have less than zero interest in becoming a brainless disciple of some old horror, only to wait around for my own chance to be killed! I want to live with… I don’t know. At least the_ chance _to do right._

_If you live long enough to complete your training as a Jedi, all your passions will be smothered out. It will choke the life from you._ His tone had the faintest tinge of desperation. _You have no idea what a Jedi is expected to become. You’ll be like an unprogrammed droid, existing only as a conduit for the Light and a weapon to crush the Darkness._

Rey squirmed, hearing the truth ring in his words and hating that she heard it. _I will not turn from the Light. There is nothing I want more than to become a fully-fledged Jedi._

_Then you’ll be hunted all your life._ She sensed a hollow sort of resignation in his thoughts. _There will always be more Snokes. There will always be more Palpatines. They will never suffer you to live._

Rey rubbed her suddenly sweaty palms on her thighs. Why was she giving any of this even the slightest nanosecond of thought? She knew what she wanted, and she knew Luke was the wisest man she knew. She had to trust him. A tiny, germinating voice whispered at the back of her mind that this, this _doubt_ was the reason Luke would never trust her in return. She was too weak for all this.

_You’re not weak to question._

_Shut up,_ she said suddenly. _I don’t want to talk about it._

_Just know that the Dark will give you what you want._

Rey shook her head. _No, it won’t._ She knew that for a nickel-plated fact. She only had to brush the thoughts of the man she was currently inhabiting to remind herself of it.

But the Jedi code… a life without her own will, just serenity and emptiness. No passion. No love. Trading one type of isolation for another. It was difficult to picture as a life she could live happily, as much and as hard as she wanted to be the best possible Jedi.

_‘There is is only peace’. I could never stomach the lies they told us._

_It’s not a lie,_ she replied defensively. _It’s something to aspire to._ Rey’s teeth clicked together thoughtfully. _But I suppose it would have been poison to you. You’re about as peaceful as a ship crashing from orbit._

He didn’t bother to deny it.

Her head tilted as she continued the thought. _Your emotions run roughshod over you more than anyone else I’ve met. It would have been hard for you growing up, I think._

She felt his mind seize. _Don’t pity me,_ he intimated violently.

_I’m not. Just stating a fact. Don’t fizz up over every little thing._

He had no answer for that, though she did sense him calming as he read her intent and found she was telling the truth. Water pattered gently against the sluice like intermittent rain for a few more moments, then was cut abruptly. She heard the door to the unit swing closed and the dull flapping of a towel being shaken out.

Rey strove to keep the tiny box well out of arm’s reach. She began reciting the 59 drill-bit types and their compatible screws in the Hutt-Petrovian catalogue, issue number 518. By the time she reached mounted electro (the thirty-eighth), she saw the blackness beginning to thin to a dark grey. Within seconds, her connection to his vision had been restored.

He was looking at himself in the mirror again, dressed in a simple black undershirt that reached his wrists. Eyes as weighted and bloodshot as ever. The metallic strip on his face was still creating a schism on his jaw, and without the constrictive tunic she saw where it ran in a contiguous stripe down his neck and onto his collarbone.

She didn’t know how to feel when she saw his face. She supposed she should feel triumphant, considering he’d wear the proof of her victory for the rest of his life. She hadn’t felt anywhere near victorious in the moment, just grimly determined not to lose. Mostly, she was just glad she didn’t have to live with the burden of knowing she’d killed someone. The stormtrooper on Takodana still haunted her sometimes.

He was running his fingers lightly over his chin and frowning.

_What is it?_

_Nothing._

There was a flash, an image of a small collection of chrome tools, dewy from condensation and his lathered throat elongated as a thin blade curved around his jaw. 

Burnt, bled, sweated, ate and shaved. He was collecting a lot of problematic traits that seemed to closely resemble a human. It had been so much easier to think of him as a wraith.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More chatting, less yelling. For two people who don't have much practice, they can really talk each others' ears off.


	7. Chapter 7

He exited the washroom and appraised the table critically. Apart from the one lying in pieces against the wall, all the other plates were at least half-empty. She sensed he didn’t have much desire to eat anything else.

“I’m going to call for the droid,” he said out loud. She puzzled over why he was announcing this mundane fact, until a quick glance at his thoughts told her what he was really saying. He was asking if there was anything else she wanted him to eat on her behalf. An unexpected warmth heated her cheeks.

 _It’s alright. I think it was a good test._ Truth be told, she was hungrier than ever now that her stomach had been denied the plates of phantom food her tongue had enjoyed, but him stuffing himself wouldn’t change that.

He strode over to a discreet panel embedded by the door. _Starving yourself to go searching for my uncle. I thought you more prosaic than that,_ he thought with a dose of viciousness.He tapped a few keys, then held his thumb against the screen while the machine took a reading.

She ignored the barbed comment. _It was interesting to try anyway. I forgot to ask earlier, which one of them was Hux’s ‘wine’?_

Kylo’s head raised in a jerk and looked over his shoulder, as if she’d physically appeared at the table and then grown a third eye.

_You can recite dozens of drill bits and entire droid specifications from memory, but you don’t know what wine is?_

Embarrassment roared up like a fed fire and incinerated her nascent good feelings.

 _I didn’t have the benefit of nearby parents who loved me and taught me about the world, unlike yourself,_ she retaliated defensively. She curled inwards, putting her arms over her head. Scavenger, the vicious chant began. Desert rat. Ignorant, ignorant, ignorant.

_You might be ignorant, but that’s not the same as being stupid. Ignorance can be altered. And it’s a waste of energy to be ashamed of your origins when you’re never going back to that pit._

Of course she knew he had no way of knowing whether on not she’d end up back on Jakku, but she felt the squeeze in her chest abate a little.

The door beeped, and Rey swore there must be a droid kept in a compartment just outside his room considering how quickly they came when he called. The silent little bot busied itself cleaning up the broken plate and stowing the remaining dishes in its storage. Kylo reached over and extracted the black canister just before it was also swept off the table. Stacking the two empty trays on its head, the droid departed.

 _This -_ he tapped the container - _is wine._ He unclasped the metallic tumbler fitted to the bottom of the unit, and unscrewed the lid. Casting his eyes around, he walked past the pulled out chair in favour of sitting on the end of his bed. He pushed his back flat to the wall, long legs stretched out and crossing at the knees, bare feet hanging over the edge. Suitably situated, he began to pour.

Rey watched in fascination as the liquid the canister produced streamed into the tumbler. It was a dark, almost black red, the colour of the berries now staining her shirt pocket. It didn’t fizz or steam.

Kylo lifted the glass to his nose. _Smell?_

She closed her eyes and concentrated, but there was nothing but the scent of cool stone. She shook her head morosely.

_What does it smell like?_

She saw him swirling the glass, creating a tiny whirlpool of red. _It’s difficult to describe. Strong. I can smell apples._

_It’s made of apples?_

_No. Fermented grapes._ He visualised a small, purple oval growing in a cluster on a vine. _They_ _only grow in certain environments._

He took a slow, deliberate sip. Rey’s eyes began to water as the taste filtered across the light years to her own tongue.

_It’s… it’s intense._

Another draught, and he let the fluid luxuriate in his mouth for several long seconds before swallowing.

 _Do you like it?_ Rey asked him. She was unsure of her own feelings on the matter.

His thoughts vacillated for a moment. Blurry shapes that resembled General Organa, clinking a glass with a Bothan. _I have no strong like or dislike of it,_ he answered eventually, and she sensed his discomfiture. _I was sent away to train before I learnt much about it._

Rey licked her lips, trying to make up her mind about the acidic, rich coating on the roof of her mouth.

 _I can see why the General would appreciate it._ Rey thought about the diminutive woman delivering stirring speeches and infallible commands to battle-hardened squadrons without a hint of nerves. _She would understand it._

_Do you have a high or low resistance to alcohol?_

_It’s alcoholic?_ She sat bolt upright.

_Yes. Have you ever drunk alcohol before?_

_Never._

The same thought appeared in both their heads at the same time. Would she feel the effects of the alcohol that he was metabolising?

 _Drink,_ she ordered. _Try it._

He obeyed, downing a bigger swig this time.

 _Why not?_ he asked pointedly.

_No opportunity. No money to buy it even if I wanted to._

_I thought you lived on a Resistance base for a time._

_Surprisingly enough, it wasn’t parties every night while your cronies were trying to kill us._

_They killed plenty of ours too. That pilot - I don’t remember his name. The talented, egocentric one._

She frowned. _Poe Dameron?_

_He would have drunk alcohol with you whenever you wanted._

_And how could you_ possibly _know that?_

He sipped again. _He was that type. Confident, extroverted, never a moment’s doubt about his place in the world._ Rey felt a well-worn disgust in his answer. _The usual small mind drawn to a recruitment holo. Easily swayed with flattery. Full of their own paltry accomplishments and despising anything that doesn’t fall inside the narrow lines of their own infantile judgement._

She wasn’t fooled for a moment. _You don’t know him at all. And you sound jealous of that ‘small mind’._

 _Jealous? Of that..._ nothingness _?_

 _Jealous because he’ll make more friends in a week than you or I will make in a lifetime. And it doesn’t necessarily follow that breaking into someone’s head means you can predict everything they’ll do, or understand what they care about. You’ve probably forgotten that at some point between the torture sessions,_ she finished with an indignant eyeroll.

He rolled his shoulders, adjusting his position. Aside from a spike of irritability, he didn’t react, and she felt him preparing to launch into the next question. If nothing else, alcohol certainly strengthened his love of interrogation.

_I will always do what is required of me in service of my Master. I am not required to ‘love’ it._  
_Loyalty is its own reward._

As though she’d forgotten to ground herself before she touched a live circuit, her insides contracted without warning. _Oh, is it? Like your father’s loyalty to you was rewarded._

 _Ask your General how much loyalty meant to either of them,_ he answered with a dull anger, as if the wound causing it was so old that he couldn’t summon fresh energy to feed it. Before she could properly work herself up into the argument, he closed it down and moved on.

_Why are you under a rock? Don’t you have a tent?_

For some reason, she was content to let the annoyance go. It was almost like she was meditating, but she felt unusually lazy and relaxed rather than focused. She trailed her fingers across the knobbled surface of her half-cave. _Don’t need one. It’s a beautiful night._

_Is it? You should show me._

_And give you a good look at the night sky in order to triangulate my position? Nice try._

He took another swig. _Would that be so terrible? Me knowing where you are?_

Rey’s eyebrows contracted in confusion. _Well, yes? You’d like nothing more than to kill my Master and me._

He said nothing for a minute. There was a weird sensation crawling up the back of her brain. Like she was dehydrated, but not quite so unpleasant.

 _I don’t want to kill you,_ he announced into the silence, and drained half the glass.

She stiffened. Bizarrely, hearing that from Kylo Ren was the same as hearing any normal person give a fantastic compliment.

 _Actually, I never wanted to kill you._ He slid down the wall until he was resting an elbow on the bed, tumbler curled protectively into his chest like he was incubating an egg. _I thought I might be forced into it, but I didn’t want to._

The sensation was expanding, like a fuzzy overlay on her thoughts. Everything was mellowing, bathed in a hazy glow.

 _I feel odd,_ she declared.

_You feel drunk?_

_What’s that supposed to feel like?_

_Like… I don’t actually know. I’ve never been drunk either._

_This may not have been the best idea for a test._ At the thought of their sorry excuse for an experiment, a tiny giggle - more of a snort - snuck out the corner of her mouth. She slapped a hand over the lower half of her face as another one escaped without warning. It wasn’t that funny. Something was definitely happening to her.

 _Describe how you’re feeling,_ she demanded.

 _I can’t._ His thoughts were slowing to a crawl, as if they were wading through a barrel of engine lubrication. He took another long sip. _This seems dangerous. I should throw this out._

 _Yes._ She nodded firmly and her vision took an interesting swoop. _But don’t._

_Why not?_

_Tell me why you didn’t want to kill me._ A distant klaxon was firing somewhere deep in the base of Rey’s brain, but she found she had no desire to panic over anything, ever. Everything was great and had always been great, in her opinion.

The incubation pose evolved. He stretched out on his bed, feet towards the meagre pillow, flat on his back with the tumbler resting on his chest. Rey had never really thought about his height while he was trying to prove how dastardly and powerful he was. But there was no denying it; there was a great swathe of distance from his head to the pale toes fidgeting with the pillow case. Fitting into a cockpit would be a challenge.

_It is. I’m an aberration in so many ways._

Her eyes scrunched in confusion, trying to parse his meaning. It was getting difficult to keep her thoughts in a straight line. She cheated and peered through the bond to figure out what he meant, and she saw he was starting to thrash again, something writhing around the pit of his brain like a woeful animal. The alcohol was loosening his emotional tethers.

 _Oh, you’re an aberration alright. You like black far too much for starters, and you think voice modulation makes you sound intimidating._ She held up some fingers to begin ticking them off. _I’m not an expert but heating vents on the side of your lightsaber are, without a doubt, dangerously over dramatic and using a cracked crystal seems like a good way to blast your own hand off one day. Your shuttle must be a nightmare to land and its thrust-to-fuel ratio I imagine can only be described as abysmal. You continue to do evil in service of evil people who treat you like garbage because you’re - too scared to leave or - I don’t know why. Your mother loves you and if you’d come home -_

_Stop._

_Why didn’t you want to kill me?_

She was treated to a long, uninterrupted view of the polished grey ceiling.

_Because you’re powerful. That power could be useful in our service._

_Yes, okay. But why actually?_

He took another sip, tumbler tilting precariously to meet his lips. He did not seem to notice or care about the percentage that spilled onto his shirt.

_Because you weren’t a Jedi yet. And I thought… I stupidly -_

His words trailed off, but Rey was inundated with imagery. Herself sitting cross-legged and building a lightsaber with a long handle, closer to a staff in length, with Kylo sitting opposite in a mirrored pose. Herself and Kylo on the bridge of a destroyer, silently watching the stars move in spatial pantomime. In a library somewhere, him unmasked, devouring the Empire’s Archives shoulder to shoulder. And then, standing together with lightsabers drawn over a grey, withered creature, recently struck off a throne.

She flinched in wondrous horror. _That’s Snoke, isn’t it? You wanted me to help you kill Snoke?_

He said nothing, only groped to the side for the bottle in order to refill his glass.

 _And also be your -_ she paused. She was about to say ‘student’, but that wasn’t quite right. _Friend?_

_Apprentice. It doesn’t matter now. Everything’s different._

She swallowed, not sure if it was the dissolving inhibitions or the shock of his honesty, but she felt compelled to be honest in return.

_It doesn’t have to be different._

His fingers gripped his shirt reflexively. _In what way?_

_I could still help you kill Snoke._

She felt an immediate flash of disappointment, as though that had been the least important of the roles he’d envisioned her filling.

_No, you can’t. No one can get to him unless he wills it, and he would know what you intended to do before you intended to do it. His paranoia and foresight are legendary. He’s afraid of me gaining too much power and destroying him to take his place, fulfilling the Sith ritual contract as my grandfather did. One day he’ll scorch my mind and be done with it._

Something hot gripped her innards as his casual declaration. _And you intend to just let him do it?_

_No. I will fight. But he is infinitely more powerful than me. And the more we speak of it, the greater the danger he just tears the information from my head._

Rey sensed his barriers shifting. Suddenly, his impeccable mental defenses were explained. He had to hide inside them or else be killed by his own Master.

_Not killed, exactly. Snoke doesn’t like killing with his own hands. Destroy my mind and release me on a planet somewhere to watch me stumble around until I starved to death is more likely. Just semantics when the end result is the same, but that’s his preferred method._

_Kylo._ Something was still squeezing her around the middle with an invisible clamp. _That’s no way to live._

_It’s what I deserve, as you would say._

_No._ She shook her head forcefully. _No, you deserve to be judged by the people you’ve wronged. Not by that creature who uses you like a tool._

His toes curled and uncurled on the pillow restlessly. _There is no one else who would agree with that._

 _Your mother would,_ she declared stubbornly. _But also, it wouldn’t matter if they did or didn’t. It’s the right thing to do._

_You’re very sure about what is and isn’t the right thing._

She dragged a hand over the lumpish rock, scratching futilely in an attempt to leave a mark. _Not always. Less and less these days. But I know I’m right about this._

He didn’t answer, his mental processes churning. Suddenly her inability to read them was frustrating, instead of just inconvenient. She had a piercing desire to know what he was hiding in there. Who he would be without the protective layers.

_Tell me something about you that I don’t already know._

He rolled onto his stomach, chin digging into a forearm and the glass held in a loose-fingered grip.

_Ask your real question._

She tensed. _No. You won’t answer it truthfully._

He tilted the tumbler towards himself, angling it so that the embedded lights above his bed caught the hypnotic, inky red swirl.

_You still want to ask._

Balls to it, she figured. _Alright then. Are you still Ben Solo, somewhere in there?_

His chin slid off his arm, and everything went dark as his nose buried in the bedsheets. _Am I secretly a disciple of the Light, don’t you mean? Am I pining to become a Resistance fighter, nobly submitting to the judgement of my mother, take up my Jedi training again and finally throwing off the act of traitor I’ve kept up for all these years?_

She tsked under her breath. _You know that’s not what I was asking. Don’t be an obtuse idiot._

_The answer should be self-evident. I loathe the thought of his weaknesses. I failed at being Ben Solo._

_Yeah, you did. Spectacularly. But you aren’t all Kylo Ren, either._ The words came to her with a clanging bell of insight. _You’re no more a perfect Dark side apprentice than I’m a perfect Jedi padawan._

To her surprise, he didn’t launch into a furious denial. His head lifted out of the crook of his elbow and sat up, movements dulled by the wine. She sensed he was waiting for her to flesh out the thought.

 _Maybe…_ she began slowly, extrapolating the idea in her head, and it was difficult to tell if it came entirely from her own side of the bond. _Maybe our mistake is expecting ourselves to always feel one way. Or be only one thing._

It felt tantamount to treason and she had the sinking feeling she was betraying her Master and her friends by even giving the thought form, but it felt… correct. Not in a grandly inspirational, flash of light from the sky illuminating her path sort of way. More the feeling of piloting a ship after a maintenance cycle. If the Force was guiding her thoughts, it was difficult to tell.

 _I don’t know who I am,_ he answered, and she could feel how much that honesty had cost him. _But I do know that I can never go back to a time when I wasn’t Kylo Ren._

 _Nor should you. The acts of Kylo Ren can’t be swept conveniently away. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be a new version of Ben Solo, either._ Defensiveness was starting to cake up his willingness to talk, so she mentally held her hands up in a gesture of surrender. _Just a thought._

He folded his legs into a cross-legged position and used a knuckle to rub roughly at the corner of his eye, trying to dislodge the blurriness.

 _I understand now why alcohol is banned on all First Order vessels. It makes you vulnerable. I don’t like it._ This statement lost a little of its weight considering he was polishing off the last dregs of the wine as he thought it.

_I like it. I like that it makes you easier to talk to, anyway._

He gave the side of the empty container a hard flick, making a dull _ting_ bounce off the chasmal ceiling. _I’m not easy to talk to. I’ve never been easy to talk to in my life._

_Using conversation to communicate instead of interrogation or sabotage? By your standards it’s practically friendly._

A strange sound escaped his lips, something like a thin, dry huff. It was so brittle and odd that she wasn’t sure he remembered how it was supposed to be done.

 _Would you call this -_ his hand gestured a little wildly in the empty space around the front of his eyes - _ANY of this normal?_

She shrugged and rubbed the side of her mouth, massaging away the small smile threatening to break out there. _Not normal for normal people. But we aren’t normal people. We’re conduits of the Force. Amazing, blessed children of the stars! Or somesuch nonsense._

He slumped backwards, his torso sliding half-propped down the wall. His thoughts were warm and elastic. _Aside from Snoke, we could be the most powerful Force users still living, you know. We could shatter planets between us._

_Or reshape them for the better?_

_Or that. We could rule this sector. We_ should _rule it._

She settled herself on her side, pillowing the side of her head on the back of a hand. _Do you find it odd that I can talk more freely with you than anyone else I know?_

_No. I think you’re the only one like me. And I’m the only one like you._

She felt him tense slightly, ready for her to reject the comparison, but she found she didn’t mind. Much. Though she couldn’t be sure how much of her newfound complacency was the wine’s magic spell.

She murmured her agreement, eyes drifting closed and free hand idly chafing her bicep. _Maybe it’s just good to know you’re not alone in the galaxy._

 _Yes._ He was silent for a minute. _Are you cold?_

_A bit. Not too bad._

He leaned over and put the empty vessel on the floor with a _tink._ Shuffling up the bed, he pulled the covers free from their ironclad tuck under the mattress, and maneuvered his long legs inside. His body snaked deeper into the sheets until he could pull the covers to his shoulder.

_I don’t know if that will work._

She did feel warmer, although she couldn’t tell if it was because of the Force bond.

 _Are you tired enough to sleep?_ she asked.

As if in reply, his body contracted with a yawn. _I can’t remember the last time I got into bed,_ he mused.

She wasn’t sure if she was imagining it, but there was a touch dragging feather-light over her wrist and knuckles. There was no way of seeing if it was his fingers doing it to his own hand under the covers, but it was soothing. Repetitive. Her thoughts were winding down into a lull.

“Goodnight,” she murmured.

A tremor ghosted through his consciousness.

“Goodnight,” he answered quietly into the silence of his quarters, and it was the last thing she heard before sleep claimed her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was all written long before the Last Jedi came out, but I've kept the conversation as is because I still think it's in character. I don't think Kylo knew he was going to kill Snoke right up until he, y'know, did it. The psychological grip Snoke had on his head was immense. Up until it was superseded by something else equally important to him, of course, but the Kylo of this story isn't quite there yet.


	8. Chapter 8

Dust tickled her nose. It was making her want to sneeze, but she held it in. She didn’t know where she was, only that it was very dusty and very rectangular. It looked like the ducts that Unkar sent her into in the wrecks, places he was too fat and old to reach. He said that children had to earn their portions, but she never got any more or less portions anyway.

There was a light up ahead, but a shape was blocking it. As her eyes adjusted, she saw it was another kid. Had they been sent in by Unkar too? Maybe they knew where this was. She wondered why she couldn’t remember getting into the wreck, and why it didn’t bother her that she couldn’t remember.

Using her elbows and knees, she shuffled a line through the dust up next to the mystery person. As she got closer, she saw it was a boy. He looked the same age as her; ten and a half. She didn’t know when her birthday was but she’d overheard some of the skin traders murmuring once that she looked eight, and that had been two and a half years ago almost exactly. She puffed up a little, wondering if this boy was as good at maths as she was. Probably not.

He was looking through a porthole in the bottom of the vent, craning his head to get a better view. His hair was black and shaggy, hanging over his ears, and covered in dust. He was dressed weirdly, like an off-worlder. His clothes were nicer than hers but they were the wrong size.

“Hello.” She wedged herself into an upright position, bending her neck when her head bumped the top of the vent. “Where are we?”

The boy looked up, horrified. He put a finger over his mouth and shushed her. It was hard to see in the dim light, but his eyes looked huge and black like a bird’s.

“Why can’t I talk?” she asked, a bit annoyed but also lowering her voice just in case.

“They’ll hear you.” He grabbed the scruff of her shirt and pulled her forward until she was looking through the porthole.

“Hey!” She pushed his hand off with a huff. “You can just _ask_ me to look!”

His chin started to tremble, and she could tell straight away he’d thought she was angrier than she really was. Maybe she’d been wrong about his age. Maybe he was younger than her, just tall.

“Don’t cry, alright? Just don’t grab me like that.”

He nodded morosely. “Sorry,” he whispered in a tiny voice.

She sighed and nodded. Kids were tricky to deal with. She was glad she was pretty much grown up already.

Bracing her hands on either side of the porthole, she looked down. It was a dirty perspex maintenance window, the type she’d seen on some Corellian frigates. But the interior of the room below didn’t look like a wreck. Well, it was messy, but it still looked flyable. Someone still owned this ship.

She whipped her head back up. “If Unkar catches us in an off-worlder’s ship, he’ll cut our portions for a week -”

He clapped a hand over her mouth. He looked torn between apologising again and scampering away in fear. With one finger, he pointed down.

The tops of two heads had appeared directly below the window, belonging to a man and a woman. The woman had pretty plaits woven all through her dark brown hair, and Rey felt a weird pang of longing when she looked at them.

“See anything?” The woman asked the man, her hands going to her hips. Her voice was muffled, but just loud enough to hear. Rey looked back up at the boy, nodding that she understood to be quiet, and pulled his hand off her face. He bit his cracked bottom lip nervously.

“Nada. He’s not in the cargo bay either.” The man ran a large, tanned hand through his hair. “Can’t you, I dunno, ‘sense’ him or something?”

The woman rounded on the man with a sharp glare. “The Force is not a tracking device for our son, Han.”

The man called Han raised his hands with a _cheh_ noise. “Well, Leia, I ain’t exactly flush with ideas here. He ran off from _your_ party, remember.”

The woman called Leia pinched the bridge of her nose. “It’s not a party, it’s a reception for the Naboo Senator and her toadies, and I really can’t leave them alone any longer or one of them is going to pull a blaster on the Trade Federation delegation. Are you _sure_ you don’t know where he would hide?”

Han sighed. “A few guesses, maybe. He's got squirrel holes all over the damn place. Always spying on you through the walls, that kid,” he added in an aside, rolling his shoulders as if to shake off something uncomfortable.

Leia looked at a tiny, beautiful golden clock that hung on her belt. Rey almost gasped; it was worth at least thirty portions for sure. “I have to get back. Keep looking for him, would you?”

Han shifted his weight, putting one hand on his belt. “Hey, come on. I told you I gotta go tonight, I’ve got a shipment due in the Estaroc system two days from now. This guy’s a hardass when it comes to his pod racers.”

“If he’s hiding onboard, you can just take him with you!” Leia said, hands gesticulating wildly.

Han blew a long breath out through his lips, his whole face screwing up tight and half turning away, as if he was getting ready to be punched. “You said you were gonna keep him here after we got back from the Kolback run.”

“Oh, I _see_. So that’s what it is,” Leia said in a low, dangerous voice. She moved until she was back in Han’s eyeline. “You don’t want Ben around. Your _own son._ ”

At this, Han put both hands to his hair, letting out a laugh that didn’t sound very happy. “Well princess, I’ll be honest, he’s not great for business these days! He used to - I dunno, he used to never shut up with the questions, beg to fly the Falcon, hell, act like a real kid once in a while. Now he just -” Han broke off with a frustrated, aggrieved shake of his head. “You think anyone wants to do business while a mute sits in the corner, levitating spare parts and staring like a bug-eyed Rodian? Huh?”

There was a thick, heavy silence after that. Leia shook her head slowly.

“So he’s not a carbon-printed copy of you. Is that why you can’t love him?”

“Dammit, that’s not what I - of course I love him, I just -”

“You know what, Han? I’m _relieved_ he’s nothing like -”

Rey looked up at the boy, pointed at him, then back down to the arguing people. He nodded slowly. There was a pain on his face Rey had never seen before, not even on the starving people hanging around Niima Outpost. He didn’t look like he was going to cry. He just looked like he was used to being sad.

What was the word Aunty Jessop had used? ‘Wretched’. He was wretched.

Rey felt a bit angry. Actually, a lot angry. He wasn’t bug-eyed at all! Yes, maybe his nose was big, and maybe his mouth looked sulky. And yes, his ears were humongous, when they peeked out from under his hair. And his long, stretched-out face was covered in moles and spots. But his eyes were fine!

She seized his wrist.

“Come on,” she whispered. “Let’s go. I’ll show you the AT-AT I found the other day.”

He shook his head violently, his whole body going rigid with fear. “I can’t leave,” he whispered back.

“Why not!”

“Because they’ll send me away to Uncle Luke to get rid of me.”

Rey pushed her tongue into her teeth. He seemed to be scared of this Uncle Luke, and whatever punishment he would dole out for running away. She supposed that when her family came back to pick her up, she wouldn’t want to be sent away either. Never, ever again.

“Show me your room then,” she conceded as a compromise.

This idea he seemed okay with, and he nodded. He shimmied past her to lead the way back up the dusty duct.

“So you can levitate spare parts?”

He nodded hesitantly.

She pursed her lips jealously. “That’s good and all, but can you use an equation to measure an angle?”

He paused, clearly trying to wrack his brain for the answer, before shaking his head.

“That’s alright. Not many people do,” she reassured him with a hint of triumph. It quickly turned into a regretful frown. “You probably still win, though,” she admitted grudgingly.

They crawled in silence for a few long minutes. He didn’t speak much, this kid. Something about him _was_ a little weird. Maybe he was like those aliens who went quiet and cross-eyed after Plutt had had them dropped on their heads too many times for damaging a good haul.

His head whipped over his shoulder.

“I know how to speak!” he bit back harshly as they clambered over some coolant pipes.

Rey blinked in surprise. “You can read minds too?”

Instantly, his face dissolved back into sullen silence, as if he’d remembered he wasn’t supposed to say that out loud.

“That’s amazing! I wish I could do that.” They hauled themselves single file through a hair-pin bend, Ben’s elbows and knees clunking so hard they were probably bruised. She would teach him how to scavenge properly, if he was going to stay on Jakku for a while.

“It’s not reading minds for real,” he warily corrected, though he seemed a little pleased she had called it amazing. “I can just tell what someone is feeling without trying to.”

She processed that implication. “So you can tell what everyone is thinking about you, all the time? That would be cool… for a while.”

He nodded without turning around; all she saw was the thick mass of black hair bobbing up and down. “And then it’s the worst thing ever,” he finished quietly.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “You need to learn how to turn it off.”

“Uncle Luke is trying to teach me. It’s hard, though. Here’s my room.”

He lifted a panel built into the side of the vent, and backed his legs out. Without warning, he dropped through and disappeared. Rey stuck her head after him to see where he had landed. He was looking up at her from the floor, head craned all the way back.

“If you’re scared to jump, I can get a chair for you to climb down onto.” His face was creased in a sneering smirk.

Rey’s mouth curled indignantly. “I’ve used a fibrocord from the roof to the floor of a destroyer twice now. There’s no way I’m scared of a baby jump like that.” And to prove her point she slid out of the portal, landing on the ground below with a _whuff_. She tried to ignore how hard her heart was beating. A year ago her frayed line had snapped and she'd fallen to the bottom of a cruiser’s maintenance shaft, breaking her wrist. No matter how many times she climbed through wrecks, she was always still a little scared. It was annoying and she hoped it would go away soon.

She slapped the fronts and backs of her trousers, trying to get rid of the dust, but slowly straightened up as she took in his room, hands dropping to her sides. This was just getting weirder and weirder.

His room didn’t look anything like the room she’d seen Han and Leia standing in. This place was _huge_ , for starters, and almost empty. Everything was polished so shiny she could see her reflection on every surface.

But he didn’t seem to care that the vent had led them to a different ship, and funnily enough, she didn’t either. She shrugged, and went to sit next to him on the floor.

He was fiddling with some mechanical bits and pieces laid out in an untidy pile, and she shuffled closer until her knee bumped into his, interest piqued.

“Are you building something?” she asked, picking up a hollow stabilizer casing and turning it over in her fingers.

He snatched it back, wide-eyed with shock that she’d touched his things. Her mouth went dry with a flash of anger.

“I’m just _looking!_ I wasn’t going to break anything!” 

He looked down at the stabilizer, then slowly handed it back. “Sorry. No one ever comes into my room.”

She huffed, still feeling put out. “That’s obvious. So? What are you building?”

His face shone with cautious hope. “Do you - do you like this stuff?”

She rolled her eyes. “Why else would I have asked?”

He shrugged, eyes shifting downwards in silence. He wasn’t smiling, but for some reason Rey could tell he was glad.

“It’s going to be a mini AT-M6,” he said eventually, picking up a screw and threading it into what looked like a keel plate.

“AT-M6?” she repeated in confusion. “I’ve never heard of those.”

“You wouldn’t. They’re brand new, made by the First Order for the new operation.”

“I’ve never heard of them either. How do you know about it?”

His brow came together, denting his forehead with confusion. “I don’t know.”

She picked up another screw and began tightening it into a bracket with a bitten fingernail. “Doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s the next model of AT-AT, like the one I’m going to move into.”

He gave her a sideways glance. “You’re going to live inside an AT-AT with your parents? That’s not much room.”

She sighed. “No, idiot. I’m going to move in there to _wait_ for my parents. It’s tons of room for just me. I’m going to run away from Plutt as soon as I’ve saved up enough scavenge to trade for a hotplate.”

“You don’t live with your parents?” He was staring at her openly now.

“No.” She winced as the screw shaved some skin off the top of her finger when she twisted too hard. “I’m waiting for them to come pick me up from Jakku. They’ll be back soon.”

He handed her a screwdriver that had appeared from nowhere next to his foot. “Just come live here with me. I’ll give you all my holocrons to read. And I’ll help you make an AT-AT model, if you want.”

She looked up at him. He was trying to keep his expression guarded, but she could tell he really did want her to stay.

“I can’t. I have to wait for my parents on Jakku or else they won’t know where I am. Sorry.” And she really did feel sorry. It might almost be nice, living with him here, getting to make things and read things instead of being forced to scavenge all the time to eat.

“You could live with me instead,” she countered hopefully. “I could extend out one of the AT walls no problem. I’ll show you all the best routes in the wrecks. I’d teach you how to fly junkers!”

He opened his mouth to say something else, but suddenly his face crumpled as though someone had squeezed it in a fist. The keel plate clattered to the floor and he clapped his hands over his ears.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, horrified.

Ben bent over his knees, knuckles turning white where they were gripping the side of his head.

“He’s talking to me again,” he grated out.

“Who is?” She spun her head wildly, looking for anyone else hidden in the corners of the room. They were definitely alone. “ _Who_ is?” she repeated, getting to her knees and shaking his shoulders when he didn’t reply.

“He won’t leave me alone,” he whimpered, eyes screwing shut as he began to rock back and forth. “He says things about my Mum and Dad and Uncle Luke.” A single tear rolled out from the corner of one tightly shut eye. “I hate it, I hate it, _I hate it!_ ”

“I can’t hear anything!” She bent down and grabbed his chin to try and get him to look at her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

He didn’t seem to be listening. “He wants me to be angry all the time,” he went on, voice cracking. “He’s always in my head, telling me what thoughts are right and wrong and talking about grandfather. But he wants me to run away, and I don’t want to!”

Rey bit her lip. She cast her eyes quickly over the room, spotting a sliding door.

“Come on,” she said, hauling him up with a hand under his armpit. “Maybe he can’t get to you in there.”

He allowed himself to be led, hands still over his ears and tears streaming silently down his cheeks. She opened the door and discovered a pristine chrome ‘fresher inside.

“Whoa,” she murmured. She’d never seen anything so fancy. Shaking her head, she stopped letting herself get distracted by the taps and looked around for somewhere to hide. There was a huge sliding cabinet under the sink, and when she moved the partition aside, it was the perfect size for the two of them.

“In here.” When he’d obediently crouched down and edged in, she followed him. The tiny, cramped space didn’t seem to bother him at all, and she realised he was as used to hiding as she was.

“Any better?” she asked, using the edge of a sleeve pulled up over her thumb to wipe the line of tears off his pale, spotted face.

His hands released their death grip on his ears, and slowly came down to rest on top of his bent knees.

“Yeah,” he said with a watery sniffle. “I think he’s gone for now.”

“Great,” she declared, smiling triumphantly. She didn’t know exactly what she’d done, but it felt like a good deed.

“Thanks,” he said so quietly she barely heard it.

She shrugged contentedly, just glad he wasn’t shouting in pain anymore. “It’s okay. I’ll help you whenever you want, while you’re here.”

He looked at her, his face twitching as if someone had stroked an invisible feather over it. “Are we… friends?” His mouth twisted around the word, like he was trying to say it in something other than Basic.

She swallowed. “I don’t know. I don’t have any, so I’m not sure what counts.”

“You’re really cool. You should have loads of friends,” he said to his knees.

She ducked her head, feeling her guts squirm weirdly. “Yeah, well, I don’t,” she said, words muffled into the crook of the elbow that had folded to prop up her chin. This boy said the strangest stuff, though it wasn’t like she minded that he thought she was cool.

“Then… we’re friends.” He said it as a statement but his big, dark brown eyes looked like they were asking a question.

She felt her chest getting hot. “Okay. If you say so.”

The corners of a tiny grin crept above the tops of his knees, making his eyes crinkle. When he smiled, all the weird parts of his face came together pretty nicely, she realised. She flicked a lock of hair away from his face for fun, and laughed.

There was a rattle at the door. Her eyes flew to his.

There was no time to pull the cabinet closed, no time to do anything except freeze as the door fell open. Two people stumbled through it. Rey seized his wrist protectively, ready to run or fight as need be.

But the two people weren’t paying either of them any attention. They were rather more busy with concentrating on each other. The man had one hand moving through the hair at the base of the woman’s neck, and the woman had her hands on his shoulders, arms threaded under his as though he were a box she was holding to her chest.

“Who are they?” Rey mouthed silently. Ben shrugged and shook his head, eyes wide.

The black-haired man had bent over to put his lips on her eyebrows, the corner of her mouth, a tiny divot in the middle of her cheek. The woman did the same with his jaw, the side of his nose, the mole above his left eye. Then they angled their heads so their mouths touched, moving impatiently against each other.

“What are they doing?” Rey whispered in shock.

“I think they’re going to have sex,” Ben whispered back, expression deadly serious.

Rey slapped her hands over her eyes and gave an embarrassed, giggly shriek. At that, the couple broke apart. The woman turned her back into the man’s chest and his arms came around her middle, propping his chin on her shoulder. They peered down at them curiously.

“Time to wake up,” the man said.

“Both of you,” the woman added, and with a bitter, sinking sensation, Rey realised they were right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love, love writing kid!Rey and Ben, even if it's only in a dream.


	9. Chapter 9

The morning sunlight was stark and unforgiving, slicing through her eyelids as if they were pitiful flimsy. Rey blinked the grit out from her lashes, sitting up and rubbing her nose with a groan. It was still itchy, as if she really had just emerged from a long crawl through a dusty ventilator shaft.

An entirely different type of pain overwhelmed the complaints her neck had about sleeping against a rock, however. A far worse ache.

Had she really, truly and honestly, begun to lose her mind? Was this how it began? Dreams about herself and the man who - not even two weeks ago - she would have proclaimed her arch-nemesis, if she could use that word in a sentence without rolling her eyes. As children. Playing with toys. And then, in the ‘fresher -

She lifted up the bottom of her tunic, and used it to muffle a hearty yell.

This was ridiculous. Where was her Master? She needed him to give her the densest, most esoteric concept to translate, or absurdly complex Force skill to fail at repeatedly, until she remembered she had absolutely no reason to think about, let alone talk to, anybody else in the galaxy.

She jumped to her feet, scooping up her canteen and paced out into the morning glare. Luke’s self-inflicted vacation had gone on long enough. Today, she was dragging him back to the temple or she was joining him out here in the wilderness, because apparently it took a pathetically short amount of time alone and idle for her to lose all good sense.

The river burbled cheerfully, indifferent to her suffering. She yanked off her clothes, almost tearing her trousers at the seams in the process, and strode in as if she was mounting an  
offensive against the water. Relishing being pricked by a million chilly needles, she submerged until the current lapped at her forehead. It was so cold she could feel the air punched out of her lungs, but she stayed under until they began burning.

She wasn’t stupid. She would not have lived long on Jakku if she hadn’t been able to judge her strengths and weaknesses honestly, and she knew she was lonely. While she’d been on base, talking to Finn and a few of the other mechanics was easy, as mostly their chatter skated through her like a comforting breeze and rarely required much input on her part. Their stories were fascinating, but many times she’d sat there like a dumb mute, picking apart a bit of scrap from the Falcon and unsure how to contribute. There was a lot she had stopped herself from telling them about her newly awakening powers, especially when she’d faced blanks stares the first few times she’d attempted to explain the Force.

But Kylo was a peer. An equal. Putting deference aside, she knew she was strong with the Force. By her Master’s own admission, she was the strongest pupil he’d ever had, bar one. There was possibly no one else in existence except that ex-pupil who knew what it was to have this frightening, wonderful power. Finding someone, anyone to talk to about it was like unshouldering a heavy pack after a long trek.

He was not the clear, simple evil she’d assumed he had to be. What other kind of person could betray their family so utterly? But if the Force had given her that dream, then there had been true misery in his childhood. Snoke had injected a sad boy with reactive compounds and shaken him until he got the catastrophe he wanted. There was no changing the reality of his evil acts, but they had been committed by someone who had never been alone in their own head. She wasn’t sure what that changed exactly about his guilt, but it had to mean something to someone. Surely?

She missed being sure about things.

Whatever else, she had to accept that there was a very real danger she was beginning to see her Master’s traitorous nephew from more than one perspective. Dangerous because she knew herself, and her propensity to be snagged by something that got her interest. If she started down that road, she couldn’t bring herself to consider where she might end up.

Talking with him was one thing. Beginning to comprehend his complicated situation was another. But dreaming about wrapping him up in her arms and kissing -

She splashed water onto her face with a slap, and groaned despairingly into her fingers. Despite being waist deep in a river, her neck and chest were covered with a hot rash of angry embarrassment. Yes, she was lonely, and yes, she’d never done anything with another human being more daring than a hug, but she was absolutely, unequivocally _not_ going to use Kylo Ren as the recipient for mush-brained, hormonal, childish nonsense.

If she was going to grudgingly acknowledge that she wanted his respect as a peer, this was a perfect way to scotch it permanently. No. She would not be a child. She may have to fight against her own naivety at every turn in this new life, but she would not -

_Tossing his head to flick wet hair out of his eyes, his long body pressing hers up against the screen door of his shower -_

She plunged her head back under the water.

***

Kylo Ren was not having a pleasant start to the day-cycle.

Despite having woken in a bed for the first time in a long time, he had woken drenched in sweat. Sharing a dream was not something he’d done since he’d been a child in Luke’s academy, longing for his mother and reaching out for her Force signature in his sleep. He recognised the characteristics of a Force dream as soon as he’d jerked back into wakefulness, and it made a painful sense considering the link he shared with the scavenger. The girl. Rey.

He had thrown himself out of bed, dressed in record time and proceeded to spent a fruitless hour attempting to meditate. His thoughts simply would not be controlled and even his anger was aimless and unruly, so he gave it up and was in the training hall beating up a practice droid before he’d let himself devote another thought to it. Her. Unfortunately, with his hands occupied but his mind free, it wandered straight back to the topic it had rarely deviated from for the past few weeks. Or months, if he forced himself to tell the truth.

The dream was replaying on loop in his mind’s eye. He couldn’t stop himself retreading the details, as a kind of mental exercise that doubled as brutal self-discipline. It made him nauseous to be so indulgent of his weakness, but he didn’t want to forget. Rather, he wanted the entire dream tattooed into his memory as a grotesque half-warning, half-treasured-secret hybrid. The thought of their embrace against the chrome door of his shower had his guts clenching in shocked exhilaration and his head shrivelling with paralysing fear. He had seen her allow his proximity as if it weren’t poisonous, had even held him in return, seemed almost pleased about it -

_In a dream. In a dream, you miserable fool._

A dream in which she’d seen just about every humiliating facet of his being. The scraps of his pathetic, patched-together childhood. His powerlessness in the face of Snoke’s seduction. His desire to let his weaker self go unchecked, to be allowed within the circle of her gruesomely beautiful Light and permitted to know its power, just for a moment. And in the darkest, most compartmented places of his soul, the place where he imagined some kind of alternate universe where he could call her an ally, even a companion, and she wouldn’t be repulsed beyond words.

All his piteous hopes dragged out to be displayed. Hopes he repressed ruthlessly, knowing their destructive power if he allowed them to sink any further into the soil of his heart. His back teeth ground together, and he took the droid’s head off with a wild left hook.

As he stood panting while another tidied up the destroyed body of its clone, a whisper stroked the back of his mind. _Dreaming inside the Force is shared. Nothing is created that she did not create also._

_“_ Shut up,” he snarled. The droid tilted its head quizzically, but he ignored it. He did not want, or need, to think about whether she shared any of his sad urges. She did not, could not, it was a conclusive impossibility, so there was no reason to waste a second agonising over it. There were far larger concerns he should be consumed with. He had spent too much time thinking about impossible things in recent days, and he should return his focus to his work.

“Talking to yourself, Ren? It was only a matter of time.”

Kylo immediately regretted he hadn’t brought his mask. His face contorted automatically into a irritated grimace at the sound of Hux’s nasal sneer.

“Leave, Hux. Today is not the day you want to cross me.”

The General’s milksop expression soured even further, something Kylo would have thought impossible. “I need updated reports on the AT-M6 construction queue. You’re lagging behind the rest of the operation.”

“They are on schedule, as you no doubt already know.” Kylo gave up waiting for the droid to be done sweeping up the wire and metal detritus, and began making his way towards the exit, hoping Hux wouldn’t follow. No such luck. The General fell into step beside him in order to complain more efficiently.

“We have a thirty-day window of opportunity to land a crushing blow against the Resistance, and only your arm of the operation is not yet fit for launch.” A note of false casualness crept into his snakish tone. “I’ve been informed that you’ve been neglecting your duties recently. Distracted, are you? Perhaps corresponding with your dear old bitch of a mother?”

Kylo stopped, and turned to the other man. The Dark welled up inside him, oily and seething like a well-tapped vein of tar. Hux’s nebbish expression morphed into one of horror as his hands flew to his throat.

Kylo watched his struggles indifferently.

“Can’t - do this -” Hux croaked, eyes bulging and fingers scrabbling maniacally at his high collar.

“Just remember that fear. It will be useful to you in the future, I think.” Kylo released his hold, and Hux sucked in a shuddery gasp. 

Another traitorous whisper tickled his skull. _Is that how she would have reacted?_

He brushed it aside, impatient and irritated with his inability to disconnect once he started thinking about her.

And then - a probe into his mind through the Force. No, a _shove_. Malformed and desperate.

His chest seized, vision swimming as he recovered. She’d never used so much power to try and enter his head before. He lowered his shield instantly, and she tumbled in as if he’d opened a door in a howling gale.

_Help_. Her thoughts were battering into each other, bruising the sides of her brain. _Help me, please._

Kylo’s stomach lurched in a few directions at once. He forced his way to the top of her mental tornado, and looked through her eyes.

She was in a cave, somewhere on the forested island she had made her new home. It was dim, but not too dim to see the figure stretched out next to where she was kneeling.

The familiar lines of that eternally youthful face. The hair that had greyed more than he remembered, but still retained the unmistakable Skywalker curl. He felt his breath cut into a thousand shards, impossible to push out or pull in. Hux was making a noise of some kind, but he was deaf to it.

_He’s hurt._ Rey lifted the corner of his uncle’s grey robe to show where a stalagmite had pierced his side. _He fell from up there._ Her eyesight swung up to a ledge higher in the cave, before returning quickly to her Master’s ashy, shrunken face. _He’s dying._

There was a cacophony in her thoughts, a whipping horrible rejection of the concept, though outwardly her actions were calm and gentle as she tilted Luke’s head to trickle some water into the side of his mouth. His uncle barely moved, unable to summon the strength even to open his eyes.

Kylo realised she was kneeling in a dark puddle.

_I know that you have no reason to help,_ she continued, trying hard but ultimately uselessly to hide her clutching panic. _But I don’t know how to heal him, and there’s no one else on this island. He’d be dead before Chewie got here._

_“_ Master Luke?” she tried softly, her voice a hoarse wreck.

_Please._ She begged with quiet desperation, though he sensed a large part of her had already rejected the effort as futile. _Ben. Please._

_Put your hands over his wound._ He stumbled to the wall and slid down to sit on the floor of the corridor, closing his eyes to narrow his focus down her end of the link. _You have to close the skin there first._

Summoning every mote of concentration he had, he cast his mind back to his earliest days at the Academy. He had never performed a Force healing, but he had seen it performed by his uncle just once, after a lightsaber had sliced into the leg of a padawan.

_Centre yourself. Draw the Force into you._

She rocked back on her knees and began attempting to clear her mind, but the fear was crushing her. It was like trying to meditate in a venting airlock. He extended his awareness past his own bounds, muddling his thoughts with hers. Where there were raging fires of panic, he smothered them under drifts of snow. He pushed and molded a barrier into place, helping to keep the suffocating spectre of death at bay until she could seize control once more.

Once she had her wits in her own grip again, he felt her usual rock-solid equilibrium reassert itself. Her focus drew inwards, and he felt the sting of the Light. It ran so vigorously through her it was as though she were the font from which all the Force sprang. There was a danger of losing his separate self in the face of it, and for a split second of madness, he considered letting go of his tether and subsuming himself in her subconscious for all time.

He snapped out of it quickly, and withdrew a ways so as not to be turned to ash by her power. When she opened her eyes again, the Force thrummed through her like a charged cannon, waiting to fire.

_What now?_

_Now, find his Light and join it with yours. You’re not trying to heal the wound. You’re helping his Force remember its shape. Visualise him healthy and whole, and let your Force bind that image to his._

Her head immediately began to cascade with memories of Luke. The first moment she’d seen him, on the cliff over the temple. She’d been so nervous, so thrilled, so unsure about even standing on the same patch of grass as the great Jedi. The fireside conversations about the nature of the Force, about her role in maintaining the great cosmic balance. Skewering a fish for their supper with a deft toss of his spear and hauling it up the mountain like a man half his age. Shyly offering to tune up his hand when she noticed a glitchy tremble in the ring finger. The first time he’d shown her the long history of the Jedi, carved into the cavern walls of Ahch-To, and the star maps the pilgrims had followed to get there.

Ahch-To. There it was. So Luke had found it after all.

A faint clanging alarm made the memories stumble.

_Don’t think about that now. Think about Luke. Let all else fall away. There is only you, and him, and the Force._

She released a long, measured breath, and pressed her hands into her mentor’s side. _Only the Force._

Her power began pushing outwards, splintering into the bond and agitating his own. His fingertips began to tremble, and he knew he could tear the bridge from the Finaliser’s hull at that moment if he willed it. The sheet metal his back was resting on began to shriek and buckle. Screws holding light fixtures in place popped from their casings, threads made smooth under the vibrating pressure. It was all he could do to stay conscious, but he pushed his strength through the link with everything he had.

Through her eyes, he saw his uncle’s limp form begin to glow. The immense quantity of power was making loose rocks in the cave levitate, and there was a thunderous crack as a boulder nearby was cleaved. Her focus remained razor-sharp.

And then, his eyes opened.

Rey let out a whooping sob of relief. Her hands remained clamped to his injury, still injecting every bit of Force she could channel. Luke’s head slowly turned towards her, and he could see the same thoughtful, care-worn pinch forming in his brow he’d remembered turned towards him countless times in the past.

_Uncle Luke._ He wanted to break down, to throw himself into his arms, to have his hair petted by his beloved uncle again like he had when he was a child. He wanted to scream, to slice something up, to let the anger consume him in a raging inferno as he was forced to relive all the ways he’d failed his role model, his teacher, his greatest disgrace and his most hated enemy. The conflicting emotions were shredding each other for dominance.

_It’s all right._ Suddenly, she was reaching into _his_ head, soothing as she went. _It’s all right. He’s going to be okay. I can feel it._ She put a hand on the spiking volcano and it cooled. He was bombarded with shame at his lack of control, considering that she was the one crying and he was not.

“Master Luke?” she tried brokenly. “Please, can you hear me? Can you see me?”

Luke’s face spread with a slow, gentle smile, his eyes wrinkling into divots.

“I can, and I can.”

It was too much. He was going to shatter. Kylo cut the connection.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things happening! At last!
> 
> Can’t say it without sounding like a parrot with no repertoire, but thank you again, so much, to everyone who commented on this story. Really does make my day. 
> 
> Shameless plug for my other story, A Star’s Cycle, which has been heavily revised (and hopefully improved) since it was posted. If you’re in the mood for an angsty, hopelessly romantic one-shot that began as imagining the first scene of the next movie, check it out.


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